The three main materials that bats are made from nowadays are wood ... Softball players looking for a wooden bat will find their options limited, but Axe makes quality bats like this Maple ...

and chunks of wood hit Marlins catcher Miguel Olivo in the cheek, forehead and thigh. Nobody in baseball had to ask. Of course, the bat was maple. Ash bats crack. Maple bats explode. When a hitter ...

Bats made of ash wood tend to crack and splinter when they break, while bats made of maple tend to snap into chunks with jagged edges that can fly wildly in any direction. Holman said he looked ...

Maple wood bats, like the one that broke and seriously injured a fan at Boston’s Fenway Park this month, became the favored tools of Major League Baseball players over ash models when Barry ...

Bamboo bats ... maple bats or metal bats, just because they don't know about bamboo," he says. And according to Dustin it only takes a few swings to become a believer. "They don't break as often ...

As baseball continues to investigate the best way to reduce the problem caused by shattering wood bats ... sent to the hospital with a shard of a maple bat having impaled his chest.

Maple bats tend to break more easily, and when they do, they often send large shards of wood flying. Low-density models, essentially the lighter bats, tend to shatter more often, putting pitchers ...

A wood bat still has its place, even though aluminum and composite bats offer a performance advantage. Because of safety (and other) issues, the MLB only uses ash, birch and maple bats.