Can A Baseball Bat Break Bones? (Warning & Reality Check)

Earlier in my article, I went through the subject of can a baseball break bones. Now, it’s time to review how a baseball bat fares on the not dangerous or deadly scale.

Many people, me included, have seen a baseball bat used as a weapon in many movies, series, and games such as the Grant Theft Auto. This makes you wonder, can a baseball bat break bones?

A baseball bat can easily break bones, destroy internal organs, do permanent damage, and even kill someone with a single swing. Even though the baseball bat is popularized as a weapon, that’s not something to play with.

It’s funny how in movies such as Fast and Furious, the main characters can take a hit from a baseball bat or an iron bar straight to the head multiple times and rub it off and continue the fight.

In real life, though, a powerful swing with a baseball bat will most certainly crack the person’s skull, resulting in major damage and, commonly, death. Don’t mistake a baseball bat as something that you can swing people around, even if they were to attack you because you don’t want to be in a position where you unintentionally did something irreversible to someone.

Now, let’s take a closer look at what would happen if you got hit by a baseball bat.

What Happens If You Get Hit by a Baseball Bat?

The result of being hit by a baseball bat can be something that you can easily walk off or something that you will never rise from it. What can happen if you get hit by a baseball bat?

Getting hit by a baseball bat and its severity drastically depends on where the swing will hit and how hard. If the swing hits you to the thigh with a low force, nothing more than a small bruise will happen. However, a swing at full force to the head would probably cause death.

That being said, it depends. However, the possible results are well known as cases where someone assaults someone with a baseball bat aren’t rare. Let’s take a closer look at what could happen from the least serious to the most.

1. Pain

One thing is certain, getting hit by a baseball bat will hurt 99% of the time regardless of where and how hard it will hit.

Pain is known to every human that has walked on this earth in the form of sicknesses, falling while playing, accidents, and even heartbreak. There are different kinds of pain, but we all know what it is.

When talking about reality and not movies, the human body is quite fragile, and even the slightest impact to the bone or muscle area will hurt. How much it will hurt will depend on the force and area the swing will strike.

Nonetheless, that’s something you can expect when getting hit by a baseball bat.

2. Bruises

You are very lucky if you get swung with a baseball bat, and you can get away with it with only bruises on you and some pain.

Bruises are caused when an impact breaks small blood vessels near the skin’s surface. The color of a bruise can be many, but its age often determines it.

The bruise will first be red when the impact happens as fresh oxygen-rich blood escapes from the blood vessels. After a couple of days, the blood starts losing oxygen when the bruise appears blue, purple, or even black. Your skin color also affects the bruise’s color. When the bruise is past five days old, it gains a greenish or yellowish color.

Generally, bruises don’t require medical attention as they are minor and go away independently. However, you should seek medical attention if you know that you got hit hard by a baseball bat, and the bruise is still there after two weeks.

3. Broken bones

If a baseball that hits you can cause broken bones, you better believe that a bat can cause that as well. Broken bones are very painful and annoying as the healing time usually is 6-8 weeks. However, it can be considerably longer.

In most cases, broken bones won’t cause anything permanent, but the impact’s severity will also determine this. For instance, a broken nose that is healed unevenly can cause snoring or loss of sense of smell. Losing sense of smell, however, would require damaged nerves.

There are various other similar examples, but luckily, it will be all if you suffer a broken bone.

4. Permanent damage

Moving on to permanent damage, this is something that no one would like to have for themselves, loved ones, or strangers.

This is also a huge risk in defending yourself with a baseball bat, as when the line of permanent damage is crossed, depending on the state and country, it can cause some serious problems for you. This includes huge fines, compensations, or jail time.

Anyways, a baseball bat can cause permanent damage such as brain damage, blindness, deafness, loss of smell, broken teeth, damaged jaw, shattered fingers or wrist, visceral removal, infertility, and paralysis.

The way these things can happen is if a shattered bone punctures an organ, the impact permanently destroys a bone, so it will ossify differently or require amputation, nerve damage, and you name it.

The list can go on and on if we study medicine deeper, but I think you get the idea.

5. Death

Moving on to the ultimate sentence, death. In most cases, getting hit by a baseball bat to the head with full power will be a matter of permanent brain damage and death. You can judge which one is worse, but it is highly likely.

Therefore, always wear a helmet; if someone attacks you with a bat, run, or if you use one for self-defense, don’t aim for the head!

6. Trauma

Trauma is often overlooked by the general population that hasn’t experienced one. People are different, and not everyone will gain trauma from the same things, but getting severely hit by a baseball bat most likely leaves some trauma, whether that is fear, nightmares, flashbacks, avoidance, or anything between.

These and other similar ones are the symptoms of Acute Stress Disorder (ASD), and a singular traumatic event causes it. I had ASD diagnosed at one point in my life because of something horrible that happened to me, and that’s not something to ignore.

Depending on what happens to you, if you are unfortunate enough to get hit by a baseball bat, and I may emphasize the word severely, you might not want to play baseball again. In contrast, nothing might happen to you even after a serious hit, so as you can see, it is personal.

Speaking of baseball bats and bones, I have a how-to guide about how to bone a baseball bat if you’re interested. If you don’t know what boning a bat is, it’s a process of compressing the barrel, making it denser. Feel free to check it out!

What Hurts More Metal or Wooden Baseball Bat?

I already explained how the force and location of the strike would impact how serious the baseball bat swing will be; there is the matter of what is used for the swing.

Naturally, when a baseball bat is being swung, it’s a baseball bat. However, three baseball bat materials are composite, alloy, and wood. Composite and alloy are metals, whereas wood is, well, wood.

Which material hurts more, metal or wood? A wooden baseball bat hurts considerably more than a composite or alloy metal bat. This is because wooden bats are generally heavier overall, the weight is distributed at the striking end, and the common maple wood type is incredibly dense.

The statement assumes that the same person swings with different bats to a similar target. Although, alloy bats are often lighter to swing, which causes a faster swing speed. Therefore, the difference can be either or depending on the variables.

However, a wooden baseball bat is a much more brute than the metal alternatives, which causes wood to hurt more.

Is a Baseball Bat Good for Self Defence?

After everything learned in this article, you can say that a baseball bat is a dangerous object if you are hit by it either accidentally or on purpose. Be that as it may, is a baseball bat great for self-defense?

A baseball bat is a good choice for self-defense with many benefits such as long reach, easy useability, good price-durability ratio, and a variety of lengths and weights to choose from. Baseball bats aren’t considered weapons, yet they give you a lot of street credibility.

Note that baseball bats are meant for baseball, so they aren’t considered weapons. However, that will often change, depending on the local law when you use it. It also varies whether you can legally use a baseball bat for self-defense or not.

Still, Amazon, for example, has various self-defense baseball bats that are meant for protecting yourself. If you decide to get one, you should know can you have a baseball bat in your car and so on.

Therefore, in the United States, it’s generally legal to use a baseball bat for self-defense if someone is attacking you and refuses to stop. In countries such as Finland, you would be in serious trouble even if someone is assaulting you with no remorse.

Personally, I think that the US way is better… Anyways, let’s take a look at the various benefits of a baseball bat for self-defense in a more in-depth way.

1. Reach

One of the best things about a baseball bat as a self-defense tool is the reach. When someone attacks you, you want to keep your distance, right?

Well, take hold of the end of your baseball bat and swing it to keep your distance. Remember not to aim for the head when defending yourself because the damage can be too big.

2. Easy to use

When comparing a baseball bat to guns, knives, or nunchucks, It is easy to use. Anybody can take hold of a baseball bat and swing away.

However, it requires some practice to know how heavy it is, how fast you can swing it, and other things. I’m not an expert with baseball bats and self-defense, yet, it’s not from the difficult end.

3. Durability

Baseball bats are durable as they are when swinging balls. Therefore, you won’t be defending yourself worth dozens of swings per day. I’m only assuming here…

You can get self-defense baseball bats in wood or metal, and each of them has slightly different features. However, both of them have great durability in common!

4. Variety

A great thing about self-defense baseball bats is that there isn’t only one variety. You can find tall ones, short ones, heavy ones, light ones, and everything between. You can get different shapes, bats meant for both or only one hand, and so on.

Funny enough, I still have my ”self-defense baseball bat” that I made in high school’s woodworking class. The wood certainly isn’t maple as it is so soft that it feels like I could press the wood with my finger. In addition, it’s extremely light; I’d say too light, so it isn’t the best for self-defense. It was fun to make, though!

5. Doesen’t look criminal

Don’t get me wrong, if you gather 10 of your friends and walk around with baseball bats in the evening, yes, it does look criminal.

However, if you keep one in your car, carry it inside your baseball backpack, or something similar, it doesen’t look criminal at all. In fact, the cops won’t think anything about it, especially if you have other baseball equipment with you, which is highly recommended because there are some dirty cops out there looking for someone to harass.

6. Credibility

Even though a baseball bat doesn’t look criminal, everyone has seen one being used for beating someone in a movie, series, or game. Thus, it does give you some street credit.

This benefit is that someone looking for trouble won’t take you as their first victim.

7. Price

Last but not least, baseball bats can be expensive, some costing hundreds and hundreds of dollars.

However, self-defense bats cost somewhere near $20 to $30, which is nothing when you think about their effect and durability, which is probably decades.

If you ask me, these seven factors make baseball bats great for self-defense! What do you think?