How to Score a Home Run Product
Despite its notorious reluctance to embrace innovation, Major League Baseball increasingly is finding room for new ideas in America’s oldest pastime. With the World Series upon us, it’s time to take a look how you can get into the game.
By Mike Drummond
Hall of Fame baseball legend Cal Ripken Jr. says he was always experimenting with ways to improve his performance.
Throughout all his 21 seasons as third baseman and shortstop for the Baltimore Orioles, Ripken tinkered with different batting stances, studied video of opponents to detect tendencies that would give him an advantage and at times placed a tee atop a bucket to perfect his batting swing.
Known as “Iron Man” for the most consecutive games played (2,632), Ripken epitomized consistency, predictability and perseverance. In short, hard work. And, truly, have you ever met someone named Cal who wasn’t a hard worker?
Ripken, to use a term he drops quite a bit, was old school. He didn’t inject human growth hormones or steroids. He signed autographs for kids. And when it came to training gear, well, it didn’t get much more high-tech than a tee atop a bucket.
“It’s kinda funny,” Ripken says. “Every 10 years or so someone wants to come in with a ‘new innovation’ that didn’t work before, thinking it will this time.”
You might think Ripken is rather crotchety when it comes to innovation in America’s oldest pastime – a game steeped in tradition and stats that’s still played with leather and wood and Red Man chewing tobacco.
Think again.
“We’re looking at a lot of different things with youth development,” says Ripken, who since retiring in 2001 founded Ripken Baseball and the Ripken Youth Baseball Academy. He also owns two pro farm teams and runs the business operations for another.
Ripken is a fan of products that boost hand strength and new training devices that develop hand-eye coordination.
“I like the concept of what I call eye awareness,” he says. “Things that have balls come at you fast with numbers on them – things that can help you detect movements that are really fast, but that allow you to be in the moment. I think of my playing days when I would be in relay cut-off situations. There’s a lot going on and getting in the right position is crucial to see the line-up of the ball, the angle of the runner, where you’re going to throw. Everything is happening fast, but you want to be able to see it happening.”
To spur development of new baseball training gear, Ripken partnered with sporting goods maker Rawlings last year. Rawlings was creating a line of youth training equipment it calls “5 Tool” and sought Ripken Baseball to help develop gear to help improve hitting for average, hitting for power, running speed, arm strength and fielding ability.
Rawlings didn’t stop there. This summer, it turned to Inventors Digest sister business Edison Nation to supplement its 5 Tool line.
Edison Nation held a Live Product Search.
The softball and fast-pitch training products had to:
- Fall within one of Rawlings’ 5 Tool categories (fielding, throwing, hitting for average, hitting for power or speed)
- Appeal to its primary audience of junior and high school athletes and their parents
- Enable athletes to reach their full potential and peak performance
- Be competitively priced and fall within existing manufacturing capabilities (Price can vary tremendously within the category, depending on the product; however, training products are generally price-sensitive )
- Have mass-market appeal
As in all Edison Nation Live Product Searches, submissions had to be unique and protectable – Rawlings’ primary concern was infringing existing patents.
“We came out of there with at least 10 projects, and two were no brainers,” says Art Chou, senior vice president for products at Jarden Team Sports, the parent company of Rawlings. “Now we’re looking at how to make them for the right cost.
“If we had come out with just one new project,” he adds, “I would have been happy.”
He could not reveal the types of products the company selected or identify the inventors, citing confidentiality reasons. However, within the 5 Tool categories, the company had expressed a particular need for new pitching-machine concepts.
While Rawlings embraces the notion of open innovation, “We’re not the ones to think of everything,” Chou says, the company is leery of dealing directly with inventors and their attorneys.
“We hate legal activity,” Chou says. “It’s a huge distraction.”
He adds this gentle admonishment to inventors. “No one wants to deal with someone who’s difficult.”
From a corporate standpoint, Rawlings liked the predictable structure of the Edison Nation process, where inventors submit their ideas and Edison Nation does all the heavy lifting, including intellectual property assignment.
“People call us and say, ‘Why can’t we just go directly to you?’” Chou says. “But we liked Edison Nation dealing with” inventors.
Training products offer the best way for inventors to crack the baseball market, Chou says. In fact, baseball accounts for the majority of the training products market. Meanwhile, gloves, bats, shoes and other so-called performance gear are mostly the realm of corporations.
“In some of our categories like bats and gloves, where we rely on a few key products, from an innovation standpoint it’s not very broad,” Chou says. “But the training programs are very broad. It’s a perfect category for us to look for outside help.”
Indeed, while baseball in general and pro ball in particular is persnickety about what types of equipment can be used during games, the field is fairly wide open when it comes to technique and training gear.
From new leaps in diagnostic software to advances on the traditional bat doughnut, innovations are finding their way into America’s oldest team sport.
ZenoLink of Endicott, N.Y., uses 3-D motion capture technology and 3-D motion data software to identify and improve training and player techniques. The company says it will begin discussions with the Detroit Tigers’ farm system at the close of this season.
Chris Welch, a biomedical-biomechanical engineer who began his career as a researcher with the American Sports Medicine Institute and the BioMotion Foundation, founded ZenoLink in 2001. The company says its system is better than scrutinizing videotape.
“Our data takes the guesswork out of identifying flaws or restrictions in functional movement. By zeroing in on what’s really happening during an individual’s sports activity, we assist athletes, coaches and trainers … in their quest to achieve optimal performance and reduce the risk of injury.”
L-3 Communications of Canton, Mass., is building on its QuesTec umpire information system that Major League Baseball has used to evaluate umps and the strike-zone calls they make for nearly a decade. Its PitchSight technology measures a pitcher’s location, velocity, release point, release angle and break.
The company says it’s a “major advancement” from the days of videotape and radar gun.
Ironically, two-time Cy Young award-winning pitcher and former World Series MVP Tom Glavine is a backer of PitchSight. Glavine was a vocal critic of QuesTec back in the day because he believed having a technological overseer made umpires nervous and “squeezed” the strike zone.
RBI Pro Swing, meanwhile, helps players on the receiving end of pitches. Invented by Texas entrepreneur Rick Miller and supported by Texas Rangers hall of famer Rusty Greer, RBI Pro Swing is a sleeve that slips onto the ends of bats, much like a conventional doughnut.
Launched two years ago, the sleeve contains metal shot that pops or sloshes depending on how well you swing.
A crisp, “inside” swing delivers a pop. A looping, long swing gets slosh. The startup company says the device improves bat control and increases swinging power.
Not all newer baseball inventions are strictly training products.
XProTex of Valencia, Calif., has developed a new type of batting glove that it says makes a 100 mph fastball feel like a 40 mph fastball.
Approved by Major League Baseball for this season, the glove also has the potential to reduce hand injuries. The glove is made of Advanced Impact Composite material derived from motocross and extreme sports that helps absorb and disperse the impact of being hit with a ball on the hand or wrist.
Company founder Jack Kasarjian, formerly president of X Bats, the company known for supplying maple bats to major leaguers, says Major League Baseball is “very reluctant to change.” However, when it comes to preventing injuries, particularly to multimillion-dollar players who fans pay to see play, MLB can react and adopt quickly.
The league approved of use of the glove within 72 hours, Kasarjian says.
“With athletes getting bigger, stronger and faster, the league has to find new gear to help protect players,” he adds.
Cal Ripken didn’t need exotic batting gloves to become one of only eight major league players to have more than 400 home runs and 3,000 hits. Nor did he require 3-D motion-capture technology to diagnose his swing.
But despite his old school ways, he’s on board when it comes to developing new training devices and techniques.
“Any device or tool that can help you react faster, that’s a great thing,” Ripken says. “And those are valuable in any sport.”
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