I played men's softball many years (basically the entire 80s and 90s). I remember we were doing batting practice one weekend (probably around 1990) and someone showed up with a new high tech aluminum bat. We were using aluminum bats at the time but they were the old heavy ones. The bat that this guy brought was 28 oz and before we used it, we were all making comment like, "how can anyone hit with such a light bat?" We started using this bat and balls started flying out of the park left and right (which was a bit of a rarity at the time). Before long, we all had $150.00 bats. All of the fields that we had been playing on quickly became obsolete.
I remember the first expensive bat I bought. These bats were available at Sports Authority and we didn't have one close (there was no internet at the time either - maybe it was there but no one knew it yet
). I had a friend and teammate that was doing a job close to that Sports Authority so I gave him $150 and told him to buy me one of those bats. When he came back that night and gave me the bat I noticed it was beat to hell. I found out he stopped at a batting cage on the way back and hit with it for an hour. I was so pissed, I was saying, "I can't believe you took my expensive new bat to a freaking batting cage." ($150 in 1990 is probably $300 today)
