November, 2000: Louisville, Kentucky
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Louisville, Kentucky, U.S.A.
Baseball is a national pastime in the United States, attracting millions to ballparks each year while millions more connect with the game via radio and television. The game as we know it today was developed during the early 1800s and is played with nine players on each of two teams, a hard ball, and a bat. Although many amateur ball games are played with aluminum bats, the major leagues continue to use wooden bats, just as in the early days of the game.
Although Babe Ruth favored bats made from the longer, heavier sticks of the hickory tree (Carya spp.), the men playing today–for example, Sosa and McGwire–prefer bats made from the American ash, Fraxinus americana. F. americana is in the Oleaceae family. This family of northern temperate plants includes other economically valuable genera such as the olive (Olea), jasmine (Jasminum), and lilac (Syringa). Fraxinus is a popular timber tree. Besides baseball bats, its wood is used for tool handles, cabinetry, billiard cues, and hockey sticks. Diagnostic features of Fraxinus include pinnate leaves with opposite phylotaxy, anemophilous (wind-pollinated) flowers found in short racemes (a type of inflorescence), and bisexual flowers. The fruit is generally a one-seeded samara. Other species of Fraxinus are popular ornamentals and have other economically important uses. The bark of many species was formerly used to treat fevers, and the leaves of several species were used in Scandinavia as cattle fodder. F. chinensis produces wax in response to insect feedings. This wax is used in Chinese candles and as a coating on pills, an additive for paper-making, and a polish for jade.
Ash logs are cut into chunky pieces of wood called "billets," dried in kilns, and shaped with a lathe into the familiar form, selling for $12 and up. White ash is a popular bat material because it is both strong and lightweight. Two out of three players in the major leagues use the Louisville Slugger, an ash bat that has been manufactured by Hillerich & Bradsby ever since it was first crafted in the Hillerich family’s small woodshop in the 1880s. Rawlings, maker of the Adirondack bat, is another popular bat manufacturer. These and other manufacturers have also produced aluminum bats since they were introduced in the 1960s. As the aluminum bats gained in popularity, the production of the Louisville Slugger fell from 7 million bats in 1971 to 1 million in 1999. This means that while approximately 200,000 ash trees were needed to produce bats in 1971, only about 40,000 ash trees were needed by 1999. Whether or not the trend toward aluminum continues, F. americana will endure as "the great American tree."
References, Websites, and Further Reading
Line, Les. 2000. The great American pastime tree. National Wildlife, April/May, pp. 40—45.
http://www.majorleaguebaseball.com/ Official site of major league baseball
http://www.baseballamerica.com/ Baseball America website
http://www.slugger.com/museum/index.htm Hillerich & Bradsby's Louisville Slugger Museum
Stern, Introductory Plant Biology, 8th Edition
Chapter 6: Stems
Bark, p. 91
Uses of wood, pp. 98—101
Chapter 7: Leaves
Leaf arrangements and types, pp. 107—8
Chapter 8: Flowers, Fruits, and Seeds
Structure of flowers (including inflorescences), pp. 129—32
Kinds of fruits, pp. 132—33
Olives, fig. 8.9C, p. 133
Dry fruits that do not split at maturity (including samaras), pp. 137—39
Dispersal by wind, p. 140
Chapter 24: Flowering Plants
Pollination ecology, pp. 425—30
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