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Baseball bat designed to beat records
FOX 13's Mark Skol Jr. reports.
ODESSA, Fla. - Scott Bridges of Odessa is a big baseball fan, and he dedicated his life to making the game safer 26 years ago.
"There's been instances where the bat has done some terrible things to people when it hit them," Bridges said. "We wouldn't want that to happen, but it could happen because of the bats breaking and shearing off."
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The backstory:
Back in 1999, Bridges worked hard to change that. He constructed a grip for bats made of Carbon Kevlar sleeves with an aramid cover. After working with auto parts, he received the patent for the grip.
Eventually, they tried the design on baseball bats. He tested his bat rigorously at UMass Lowell. His team was able to get a machine to throw a baseball 100 miles per hour 28 different times while a separate machine swung a bat at 107 miles per hour to hit the pitch.
One thing was clear after the testing: Bridges got the results he was looking for.
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"It was breaking less often," Bridges said. "It broke about one third of the time that it does currently."
By the numbers:
The bats were not breaking as much. However, in the process, it did break a record that still stands to this day. The bat hit the ball with an exit velocity of 137.77 miles per hour.
The MLB record was set back in 2025 by Pirates outfielder Oneil Cruz, who crushed a ball with a 122.9 exit velocity. Bridges' bat cleared that by almost 15 miles per hour.
"People have tried to duplicate things, but no one has ever been able to show me where they have gotten more of an exit speed anywhere near that I got," Bridges said.
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The bat caught the attention of several big-league teams. Bridges says he sold it to 20 clubs and even got the home run king Barry Bonds to give it a go.
"[Bonds] was using it all of Spring Training that year, and he loved it," Bridges said. "We had quite a number of players that really did like it. A lot of the local Rays loved it."
Deion Sanders even used the bat during his baseball days, but for some reason, Major League Baseball did not. It was never used in a regular season game.
"The equipment guy just took it from [Bonds] and said, 'That's illegal,'" Bridges said. "They never really gave me an explanation. They just said it was not approved. What if it was legal? What if Barry Bonds continued to use it that year? Those were the years he broke that record. He was so wonderfully nice to try ours, and he seemed to like it."
He always has a thought in the back of his head that maybe the MLB will change its mind.
"It always worries me that one day they will say, 'It's okay now,' and then all of those years we had this wonderful idea, and no one took it to heart," Bridges said.
Pictured: Scott Bridges.
Bridges says it fits all the MLB qualifications to a tee, especially after George Brett's famous eruption after he had excessive pine tar on his bat during a game in 1983.
What they're saying:
"Well, it is a rule that if you use a bat, it has to be breakable," Bridges said. "It definitely was breakable. It was still a wood bat. It was just a sleeve within the first 18 inches. The rules say you can put any substance on the first 18 inches of a bat to enhance the grip, and that's what our product was. It has definitely been disappointing because of the history of broken bats and how people do get hurt."
He's held on to this bat all of these years later. Now, he's looking to part ways with the record-breaking bat.
"Sometimes it's just about moving past something," Bridges said.
He had it listed on Facebook Marketplace for $39,000.
"To me, it's worth a lot," Bridges said.
He hopes someone can get their hands on it to continue telling the story about this bat.
"I couldn't imagine that Guinness wouldn't want a record [breaking bat]," Bridges said. "They always want to know what the record is for performance. Sometimes I have thought about selling the whole collection. It is hard to explain how much went into that time and others too. There were a lot of others involved, and we spent a lot of time and effort."
And no bat might ever perform like this one ever again.
"There's nothing like that," Bridges said. "I can't find a search. I can't find anyone who has gotten anywhere near that speed of 137.77."
What's next:
Bridges unlisted the item but plans on putting it on eBay.
The Source: The information in this story was gathered by FOX 13's Mark Skol, Jr. during an interview with Scott Bridges where he provided documentation on the testing numbers at UMass Lowell.