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Sports

The Beginning of a New Era for College Baseball

MCC begins new season with newly-sanctioned BBCOR bats, which will decrease scoring in the college game.

College and high school baseball over the past 20 years could be described in a single word, *ping*.

That ping sound that comes off an aluminum bat when it makes contact producing mammoth home runs and balls that fly back at the pitcher at about the same speed or more than it was pitched.

That ping sound will be silenced mostly this season in the college and next season in the high school game with the introduction of the BBCOR or known as "Bat-Ball Coefficient of Restitution."

The new bats will reduce the amount of “bounce” off the bat and all bats must have a BBCOR curtained sticker.

McHenry County College coach Hoss Johnson said it’s going to be a different game with the new bats.

“I’m excitedly curious about how it goes to affect the game. I know our game plan and it’s going to be people play the game the way it‘s supposed to be played or the way it was meant to be played,” Johnson said. “Doing the right things and the little things, moving the runners and this and that. They are just like a wood bat. With a wood bat, you hit the sweet spot and it will go but the sweet spot is very small. You‘re not going to get the little flare hits with this bat. Base runners are going to be a premium and defense is going to be a premium.”

The Scots open their 2011 season this weekend in Jackson, Tenn. against Jackson State Community College and Johnson added that the days of long ball after long ball are over and that pitchers are going to looked at more for finesse than pitch speed.

“You can’t wait around for the three-run homer anymore, you have to move the runner and play the game,” Johnson said. “In college, the emphasis on pitching was how hard does he throw and this and that and now it is more like Greg Maddux, 86-87 MPH, which isn’t very hard by big league standards but he had movement, he hit his spots, threw strikes and was smart. It’s going to make those guys who don’t throw as hard better.”

This bat change will see games that ended 17-13 in previous seasons become more 4-2 or 3-1 as the power of the bat has been decreased that much. Johnson added that he had the choice he would want to go to all wood bats but the money just isn’t there.

“Our players asked that question but I don’t have the budget to supply our players with enough wood bats or enough quality wood by the end of the season,” Johnson said. “I don’t know any program who does except for the upper echelon of NCAA Division I that could possibly do that. I would like to go all-wood but the economics are just not there.”

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