Flower vases made from old metal baseball bats
12:39 JST, April 22, 2024
New standard bats that suppress ball speed were fully introduced to high school baseball games this spring, making many conventional metal bats no longer standard. As a result, steps are being taken to make effective use of the aging bats. Some people reuse them to make various objects such as vases and pencil holders, while others send them abroad to promote the sport.
Forty to fifty old bats were made into flower vases and other objects eight to thirty inches high and sold to spectators on March 23 and 30 at a baseball stadium in Naha, a venue for the spring high school baseball tournament in Okinawa Prefecture. All items were priced at ¥1,000.
“We aim to use the proceeds to purchase the new standard bats and distribute them to high schools in the prefecture,” said Atsushi Yara, chairman of the Okinawa chapter of the Japan High School Baseball Federation.
The federation collected more than 10,000 old bats in fiscal year 2022 and expects more to be collected this summer. It said the collected bats will no longer be used as bats.
Around November 2022, after learning that more than a thousand bats may have been thrown away in Okinawa Prefecture alone, Yara started thinking about ways to reuse them. Last fall, he asked four high schools in the prefecture, including agricultural and industrial schools, to cut and polish those bats and grow plants so they could be sold together. The students worked hard to fulfill his request.
The students prepared 90 items and sold most of them on March 23 and 30. They plan to collect more old bats.
The new standard metal bats cost about ¥35,000 each, about ¥10,000 more expensive than the old ones. As a result, some schools find it difficult to purchase enough bats. “I want to use the profit from the sale to buy new bats,” Yara said.
Donate equipment abroad
The federation’s Fukuoka chapter sent about 250 old bats to Sri Lanka in February, at the suggestion of Sujeewa Wijenayake, a high school baseball umpire from Sri Lanka.
In Sri Lanka, where cricket is popular, access to baseball equipment is limited. Sujeewa said he started playing baseball at his high school and found it difficult to purchase the necessary equipment. He came to Japan to study and later emigrated here. He has been sending baseball bats, donated by primary schools and others, to his home country for fifteen years. This time he asked the chapter to collect the bats.
“The equipment is in good condition, so Sri Lankan children can still use it,” he said.
Pass it on
Among the high schools participating in the National High School Baseball Invitational Tournament, the baseball team of Tanabe High School in Wakayama Prefecture donated about 20 old bats to elementary school students during a special event last year.
“We gave them the bats in the hope that they will continue to play baseball in the future,” said the team’s manager.
Anan Hikari High School in Tokushima Prefecture and other schools gave their old bats to high school baseball teams.
Sujeewa Wijenayake, left, and Tetsuro Yoshioka, the director of the Fukuoka chapter of the Japan High School Baseball Federation, hold old bats collected by the chapter.
