Sports are expensive. That's just a matter of fact. I don't have kids, but I can't imagine the amount of money I would be shelling out for sports if I did. Between equipment and fees for travel teams, I know that my relatives spend a pretty penny to keep my nieces and nephews on the court/field.
I was down visiting my in-laws a while ago and somehow we got talking about softball bats. I knew they were expensive, but I never realized just how much. We are talking space age materials and so much science and engineering it may as well be a rocket ship.
Don't believe me?
Check out this recent search I did at Dick's Sporting Goods. It's pretty easy to see that bats can range anywhere from $50 to $500 bucks. In fact, the officials often require that bats get inspected at the beginning of tournaments to make sure that players aren't using "illegal" bats.
As the title states, it's crazy!
Anyway, like I mentioned, we were talking about bats a couple of months ago. It turns out my younger niece who plays softball had gotten a new bat for Christmas. Up until that point she had been using an older bat that was her sisters but it had a crack in it.
These bats usually come with some form of warranty, but that usually only allows you to swap out the bat for a replacement once. After that, you are busting open your wallet for a new bat. In this case, the bat had already been broken and replaced once, so this new crack had it on it's last leg.
Again, despite the crack, my niece was hitting lights out with this bat. If you go back and look at some of my older posts, you will see she put up some pretty impressive numbers during summer ball.
Like I said, she got this new bat for Christmas, but the couple of times she tried it, it just wasn't hitting the same. She didn't care for it. It was the same model as her old one, but it was a newer generation and whatever they changed wasn't sitting right with her.
Knowing the old bat with the crack in it wouldn't hold out forever, her dad set about finding a replacement.
I guess it shouldn't be a shocker, there is a whole market place for this kind of thing. He found a guy on Facebook that was selling a brand new older generation Ghost (that was the name of the model) bat.
It was halfway across the state, but he agreed to trade the newer bat and an undisclosed amount of money for the older bat.
You guys think bottles of whisky or stocks are a good investment, we should be buying softball bats! If you find one that is legal for most tournaments, is well liked by most players for the way it hits, and is out of circulation, you could make a mint on the resale market.
Pretty crazy right?!
I never would have guessed this could be the case. Fall ball starts up this weekend, so I am looking forward to seeing how she hits with her new (old) bat. It's going to be a lot of fun no matter what I think!
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All pictures/screenshots taken by myself or 