Pro Stock Model

[JCC1968]

Hi

I notice on the website under Luis Aparicio S44 that some bats have a "Pro Stock Model" What is this exactly?

How does this effect the bat?


Thanks
Jason

[MSpecht]

Hi Jason--

When a player signs an endorsement contract with H&B, it allows the manufacturer to produce bats bearing the player’s name to be sold to the public, professional, and non-professional teams. These bats become known as Pro Stock bats.

Pro Stock bats are professional model bats, usually standardized and popular with players and the public. Pro stock bats are often ordered by professional teams for their players at the major or minor league levels. H&B usually shipped pro stock bats with branded player names, associated with the team. Sometimes, in a general assortment of models, lengths, and weights some pro stock bats may have dimensions close or similar to the bats used by the player whose name appears on the barrel. These bats may be troublesome for collector's of game-used bats. Less troublsome are pro stock bats with inconsistent dimensions from that found on the players individual shipping record, as the player probably did not use these bats. In short, not all professional bats bearing a player’s name are necessarily made for the player, whose name is burned onto the bat,

Generally pro-stock bats bear the names of popular players in an era and are models of bats popular with the general public, such as S2, M110, and R43.

In the case you mention, Model S44 was designated as Aparicio's Pro Stock model. In actuality, during his career Aparicio used that model briefly in 1956 and 1957, frequently in 1958 thru 1961, then again in the early 1970s. However, when Aparicio's team would order an assortment of different models in a "team index' order, the S44 bats included in those orders would often have Aparicio's name on the barrel.

How does this affect any specific bat? It then becomes a priority for the collector to review any known individual game use characteristics of Aparicio, review the dimensions of the bats during the specific labeling period and compare them to theose of the subject bat, and seek additional provenance for the subject bat. In general, if a player's pro stock model bat is from a labeling period where that model does not appear in the player's individual H & B records, it is extremely difficult to place that bat in the players hands.

Note that the pro Stock Models for every Hall of Fame player are contained in the Player's bat Charts section of the GUU Game Used Library section of this site.



Good Luck in future collecting.

Mike Jackitout7@aol.com