How to Choose a Baseball Bat for Little Leaguers

By Tony Naile
Tony Naile

Tony Naile played minor league baseball with the St. Louis Cardinals. Naile has continued his association with the Cardinals by becoming an associated scout for the organization. He has coached for several high school baseball teams and Summer baseball leagues. Naile is currently general manager of Showtime Sports Academy in Franklin, Tenn., where he teaches lessons and holds clinics and camps. He also serves as a scout for Next Level Prospects, a company that exposes talented, deserving athletes to colleges and universities across the country. www.nlprospects.com

www.ShowtimeSportsAcademy.com

Little league baseball players abide by rules that determine the difference between weight and length of a baseball bat. Pick a baseball bat for little leaguers with tips from a former minor league baseball player in this free video on baseball equipment and skills.

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Video transcription

Hi I'm Tony Naile and today I would like to talk to you about how to purchase a baseball bat and things to look for in your purchase. If you are a Little Leaguer you want to look for a bat that is your right length. Normally what we like to do here is put the end of the bat underneath your arm pit here reach down and the end of your fingers should be at the middle of the sweet spot. That will give you the proper length of the bat to buy. As far as the weight of the bat, this will be referred to as a minus something or drop something. It is like drop ten or drop twelve. This is actually just a difference in the ounces subtracted from the length. For instance this is 29, 17 that gives you minus 12. The bigger the number, the larger the bat. A you get in Little League you will be using this bat until you are sixth grade. Then you go into middle school ball and it is a drop three thereafter. In most of your rec leagues you are required to use a small barrel bat such as this a 2 and 1/4 inch bat. In tournament play and travel ball teams they are allowed to use what we call a big bat, a big barrel bat but the minus and the drops are the same thing. If you are using a wood bat, the things to look for in a wood bat is just to depending on the kind of bat that you want to use, if it's an ash bat or a hickory bat or a maple depending upon the hardness of these bats just get one that feels good to you. One thing you can look for on the grain is the straighter that your grain is and the tighter, the close the stripes are in your grain, usually is a better bat. It's been cut by wood, it is not around a knot or a tree that has been bent. That gives you the straighter grains. After that you can also look for a bat that has got the proper knob on it. This knob is a beveled knob that kind of slides and your hand kind of slides off whereas this bat is more rounded off. Just whatever fits you best. Some people like to put their thumb over the top and some people like to stay up on the bat so this is all just a matter of preference.