Boning is the practice in American

baseball Baseball is a bat-and-ball sport played between two teams of nine players each, taking turns batting and fielding. The game occurs over the course of several plays, with each play generally beginning when a player on the fielding t ...

of treating a

baseball bat A baseball bat is a smooth wooden or metal club used in the sport of baseball to hit the ball after it is thrown by the pitcher. By regulation it may be no more than in diameter at the thickest part and no more than in length. Although histor ...

with a bone (typically a cattle

femur The femur (; ), or thigh bone, is the proximal bone of the hindlimb in tetrapod vertebrates. The head of the femur articulates with the acetabulum in the pelvic bone forming the hip joint, while the distal part of the femur articulates wit ...

). The bone is run repeatedly up and down the barrel of the bat. The practice has the benefit of slightly hardening the bat by compressing the surface wood cells, and also (in superstition) of boosting hitting on the grounds that bone and hide go together, thus bone attracts hide, and as the baseball is covered in hide it will be attracted to the boned bat. The bone may be bolted to a fixed surface, the bat being moved over the bone rather than the other way around. Sometimes another stationary hard surface is used, or a bottle, as these are just as good at hardening the bat, although not imparting the superstitious benefit. According to some sources, a harder bat surface, having less " give", experiences less

deformation Deformation can refer to: * Deformation (engineering), changes in an object's shape or form due to the application of a force or forces. ** Deformation (physics), such changes considered and analyzed as displacements of continuum bodies. * Defor ...

, thus forcing more deformation onto the baseball. The ball, being softer than wood, deforms more, so more

kinetic energy In physics, the kinetic energy of an object is the energy that it possesses due to its motion. It is defined as the work needed to accelerate a body of a given mass from rest to its stated velocity. Having gained this energy during its acc ...

is absorbed by the deformation, giving a lower coefficient of restitution to the entire event, and thus less speed of the ball coming off the bat, although the practical effect may be small; see bouncing ball physics. Other sources claim the opposite effect, and no conclusive testing proving the matter either way has been conducted. In any case, bat weight, swing speed, pitch speed, and contact angle are more important factors. Boning is also held to lengthen bat life by reducing splintering. Unlike corking, boning is entirely legal under baseball rules. Through most of the 20th century, the great majority of major league bats were made of

ash wood ''Fraxinus'' (), commonly called ash, is a genus of flowering plants in the olive and lilac family, Oleaceae. It contains 45–65 species of usually medium to large trees, mostly deciduous, though a number of subtropical species are evergreen ...

. In 1997, maple wood bats were permitted in major league games, and became widely used in the 21st century, following the example of home run champion Bobby Bonds. Maple being harder than ash, there is less need for boning. Also, in the early and mid 20th century bats had little factory processing beyond lathing, while modern bats undergo more factory processing, often including hardening and polishing. Consequently, boning is less efficacious and somewhat less common than in the early and mid 20th century. Sometimes, boning bats would be the duty of the

batboy In baseball, a batboy or batgirl is an individual who carries baseball bats to the players on a baseball team. Duties of a batboy may also include handling and preparing players’ equipment and bringing baseballs to the umpire during the game. ...

References

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