Caring for Your Wood Bat

Caring for Your Wood Bat

Congrats on your new bat! You’ve got a bright future ahead of you filled with dingers—we can feel it. So now that you have your weapon of choice, how do you take care of it? Your Phoenix wood bat is one of the finest in the industry and we want to see you have the most success with it.

Hitting With Your Wood Bat

A wood bat has a hard side and a weak side, owing to its grain structure. That gorgeous Phoenix logo you see on your bat is strategically placed on the weak side of the bat.

If you continuously hit on the weak side of the bat, it’s more likely to break. To hit the ball on the strong side, you want to swing your bat with the logo facing straight up at the sky or straight down at the ground when you make contact.

To ensure you’re hitting on the strong side of the bat everytime, you should readjust your grip before each swing until it becomes second nature:

• Get in your stance and take a slow swing
• Stop and hold your swing over the plate
• While maintaining your grip, rotate the bat in your hands until the logo is facing straight up or down
• Return back to your stance

If you get this positioning down, you’ll hit it on the strong side of the bat every time. You’ll get better hits, and your bat will last longer.

Storing Your Wood Bat

Properly storing your bat goes a long way towards making it last. When you’re done swinging for the day, you can’t just toss your bat in the back of the car or leave it in the garage—what are you, crazy‽

Wood bats are made from, well, wood. Wood is porous and fibrous, and its composition is vulnerable to the conditions of its environment. That means the air outside can hurt the wood stuff inside.

Moisture in the air affects the wood fibers in your bat. Hot weather tends to be more humid, and cold air is mostly dry. Dry air will pull moisture out of the bat, drying it out and making it brittle. A brittle bat will not perform as well and will be more prone to breaking.

If you leave your bat exposed to the elements throughout the year—even if it’s in a bag—the continuous changes in moisture will diminish the structural integrity of your bat.

Instead, Take your bat indoors (and the garage does not count as indoors!) after each time out. Lean it up against a corner in as straight up and down a position as you can get. A corner in your room or a closet are great places to lean a bat up against the wall.

Cleaning Wood Bats with Color/Clear Coat

Many hitters like to keep their finished wood bat clean so that they can see where on the bat they’re hitting the ball. If you can see where you’re hitting the ball after every BP, you can make better adjustments the next time out.

If you’re one of those types of hitters, we suggest using Windex® Multi-Surface Vinegar on a dry, lint-free cloth to clean off the ball marks.

Spray the Windex® Multi-Surface Vinegar on the cloth, then wipe the marks in the same direction as the wood grain. Immediately take another clean, lint-free cloth and wipe off the bat until it’s dry.

This method can be repeated as needed. While there is no perfect solution that will completely remove all marks without the risk of marring the finish, this method has proven the best in our testing to minimize that risk.

Once the ball marks are out, take a spray can of clear semi-gloss polyurethane and lightly spray the barrel of your wooden bat. Hang the bat from the knob on the handle and let the bat dry. You will be able to see how you are hitting the ball from game to game.

WARNING: The cleaning method with Windex® Multi-Surface Vinegar is only applicable to areas of the bat that have a finish. It is not for use on natural (unfinished) wood or bats that do not have a clear coat over a colored finish. Using any cleaning product may dull some of the color or shine of the finish.

Cleaning Wood Bats with Natural Finish

For natural wood, you may try a very fine-grit sandpaper (200 grit or finer) to lightly sand the ball marks, moving the sandpaper in the direction of the grain of the wood. Avoid going over engraved areas and the Phoenix logo.

NOTICE: Our legal team tells us we need to state that Phoenix Bats is not responsible for the results of above methods to clean and/or restore the finish to your bat. Pressure used, different cleaners and other considerations may yield different results.

Phoenix Bats Is Your Home for Wood Bats

Check out Phoenix Bats’ line of baseball bats, softball bats, youth bats, and training bats—all made in our shop in Columbus, Ohio. If you need help picking out the perfect bat, call us at 614-873-7776.