Stephen Clark (@sgclark.mastodon.social.ap.brid.gy)

The Guy Who Invented The Torpedo Bat The Major League Baseball season has gotten off to a spectacular start with everyone abuzz over the newest toy to hit the sport – the “Torpedo Bat”. Over the opening weekend series between the Yankees and the Brewers, the Yanks blasted a record 15 home runs (and 9 in one game), many of them from players using this new bat. As a result, this new bat design may make its inventor, Aaron Leanheardt (Gift Link – WSJ), a wealthy man: > When Aaron Leanhardt was a graduate student in physics at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, he was part of a research team that cooled sodium gas to the lowest temperature ever recorded in human history. > > What his colleagues didn’t realize was that in the rare moments when Leanhardt wasn’t toiling away at the lab, he was moonlighting as a speedy shortstop in a local amateur baseball league. Leanhardt was good enough to play in a 2001 All-Star Game at a minor-league stadium in Lowell. He hit .464 that season. > > “We didn’t even know about that,” said David Pritchard, a professor emeritus at MIT. > > More than two decades later, the baseball world suddenly knows all about the 48-year-old Leanhardt. He’s the inventor of the so-called “torpedo bat,” perhaps the most significant development in bat technology in decades. > > Leanhardt’s creation exploded into the mainstream this weekend, when the New York Yankees tied a major-league record by bashing 15 home runs in the first three games of their season. Nine of the homers came from players who have adopted the torpedo bat, including three from infielder Jazz Chisholm Jr. > > Jared Diamond – The Wall Street Journal Now, teams and players around MLB and all other leagues are scrambling to get their hands on this new bat design that may transform the game a way that we have not seen in years, maybe since they reduced size of the pitchers mound. https://www.sgclark.com/2025/04/the-guy-who-invented-the-torpedo-bat/?utm_source=mastodon&utm_medium=jetpack_social