The baseball bat is a brutish creation, a blunt instrument created to pummel a round ball. Never has anyone accused it of being some sort of technological marvel. It exists in almost the exact form it did when baseball first started a century and a half ago because even its earliest incarnations came pretty close to perfection.
Today's version looks about the same as it has for decades – maybe a little shorter and lighter, some with cupped barrels, all with the same round knob on the handle, save for a single bat of those used by the 750 major leaguers.