once in a blue moon, i'll find a bat that i want to pick up and, not knowing much about bats, find that a million questions pop up about the very nature of authenticating bats. mike specht once said something to the effect that bat authenticating is pretty much just interpreting the LVS records. i have to think it's much more than that though. for those of you who are "bat people", here are my questions:

- when authenticating an LVS gamer, paramount importance seems to be placed on how well it matches the LVS records in terms of model, length, weight, and finish. unfortunately, there are tens of thousands of bats on the market that don't have LVS entries. how do you go about determining the proper model, length, weight, and finish for a player that has no LVS record?

- in a best case scenario, let's say you're working with known records and have a bat that matches the model, length, weight, and finish that the player was known to have used. that's only half the battle though isn't it? buyers don't simply want a game-issued bat, they want to know it was used by that player. given that players regularly use other players' bats, it may not be so easy to say that a certain bo jackson model bat, for example, was actually used by jackson and not kevin seitzer. players don't always put their numbers on the knob. so let's say you've got a 1989 bo jackson bat that properly matches the model, length, weight, and finish. unfortunately, bo didn't put his number on the knob. so how can you say the bat was used by jackson and not by another teammate that tried his bat out? from what i gather, the answer is that you look for player use characteristics such as how the handle is prepped, pine tar application, where the ball marks are, etc. while relying on specific player use characteristics makes perfect sense to me, here's the question i have:
authenticators like taube or bushing must've authenticated thousands of bats in their day; everyone from heine manush to pete rose to kevin seitzer to julio lugo. question: even if you manage to work with a bat that matches the LVS records, how can any authenticator be familiar with the unique and subtle player use characteristics of tens of thousands of players over a 50+ year time frame? just think of all the bats sent to taube and bushing. how can they possibly know the player use characteristics of every one of them?

the other day, a mcgwire jersey was discussed and howard wolf and mark weimerskirch mentioned that mcgwire always had 2" of length added on his A's jerseys. they know this because they're mcgwire collectors. i had no clue. it's completely outside of my niche. i guarantee there isn't a single individual on this planet that knows the jersey customizations of every mlb ballplayer for the past 50 yrs.

so let's say that a 1987 LVS george bell is sent to a bat authenticator and much to their delight it matches the LVS records. is it at all realistic to think that they're familiar enough with george bell's specific use characteristics to then attribute the bat as being used by bell instead of one of his teammates? i have to think it's impossible. it's one thing to be familiar with the use characteristics of someone like mantle or pujols. unfortunately, most bats aren't a mantle or a pujols. i just don't see how someone like taube or bushing can be familiar with the use characteristics of all of the bats that are sent to them. if i'm right and they aren't familiar with them, then how can they properly authenticate them?

thanks in advance,

rudy.