For years I have taught kids to bunt asking them to use the visual illustration, Try to catch the ball with the bat. Tinkering in my mind, I decided the best way to drive home this point was to come up with a way to attach a small baseball glove, or similar apparatus to a bat, in order to actually catch the ball.
One day I happened upon a lacrosse stick (I bet it has a name) and thought- this might be the ticket. It looks like a standard softball would fit in the net area perfectly.
It did.
The steps below illustrate the few minutes it took to get to a point where a sealant is required to have the end of the lacrosse thing stick to the bat remnant. The first one I made had two fundamental mistakes: I had the catching part out too far from the bat grip and the girls were about a ball width away from a decent catch. I also used too much sealant so the thing was about 34 ounces overall.
Here are the individual steps:
#1 saw the aluminum bat head off; I estimated about where the label would begin
#2 saw off the stick (leave about 6-8 inches to set into the sealant)
#3 insert something to prevent a bat load of sealant. I used foam. It's easy to make it too heavy.
#4 insert one into the other and check for a good length. I set this one up for about 29" to the centor of the "catch" area.
#5 ready to pour in some kind of sealant. I happen to have access to a great compound.
I already proved that a lacross stick cannot handle a ball pitched from a pitching machine (the plastic breaks at the screw holes). Use this flicking balls from a short distance at what I would call a soft toss like speed. It can handle a 25-35mph pitch but that's not the point.
We got some cross eyed stares in our pregame warm-ups when we used this. We had a bucket full of balls on the pitcher's side and an empty bucket on the batter's side. Eventually they get good enough to catch and load the bucket in one motion.
This link takes you to my second installment, or Volume 2, of the Incomplete Inventor Series titled Batting Cage Lighting or something similar.
