WEST WARWICK, R.I. – The crack of the baseball bat is back.
For years, the Rhode Island teams in the American Legion Baseball league — the oldest nationwide youth program — played with aluminum bats that make the characteristic crack of America’s game sound more like a dull clang.
But Rhode Island is once again playing with wood, one of at least three states nationwide where the American Legion has mandated a switch from metal bats to the type used in Major League Baseball, in part to return the game to its purer origins.
Players are now seeking their own personal Wonderboy — the beloved bat in the 1984 classic “The Natural” that Roy Hobbs, played by Robert Redford, carves from an oak tree struck by lightning.
“There’s a lot of nostalgia using all wood,” said Jim Quinlan, national program coordinator for the American Legion league, which was founded in 1925 and counts the likes of Yogi Berra, Tom Brokaw and Dick Cheney as alumni. “Baseball people are hard-core traditionalists. The old-time coaches love that old wooden bat. They say it teaches the kids to be a better hitter.”
Connecticut was the first to switch to all wood two seasons ago, Quinlan said, and Rhode
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