Checked Swing

All was clover. Randolph planned to expand operations, hire others, run a year-round, bat-making empire. The dream lasted, oh, about a year.

In the spring of 2002, Sports Illustrated published a story about the explosion of new bats, among them the Chesapeake Thunder. "I told my wife, 'This may be good or bad,' " Randolph says. He just had a feeling.

Sure enough, in December, another MLB letter, "about a half-inch thick," showed up in the mailbox, Randolph says. The rules of engagement had changed. All approved bat suppliers were asked to pay $10,000 a year for administrative costs and show proof of $10 million of liability insurance. The cost of doing business, Randolph says, proved too great.

In a good week -- during the high season of spring and summer -- he turns out about 150 to 200 bats that sell for about $60 apiece. The amount of the annual insurance premium, he explains, was about what he was making as profit from his fledgling enterprise. "I couldn't take everything and pay it on the insurance," he says.

That ended Randolph's major league career.

Since then, MLB has lowered its financial requirements to a $5,000 administrative fee and a $5 million liability policy.

Pat Courtney, a spokesman for MLB, says that his organization changed the rules for the 2003 season because it was concerned about liability issues and about the intentions of some bat makers. "A lot of people who were having their bats approved were taking that approval and using it for other reasons," he says. And MLB justifies the administrative fee as a good-faith demonstration that a company is committed to making bats for major league players.

The restrictions were not put into place to protect larger companies -- such as Louisville Slugger, Rawlings and Wilson -- from competition, Courtney says. Some 30 different bat makers provide bats to the bigs, he says.

Randolph, however, has decided to leave the major leagues to the major manufacturers. Now he mostly makes bats -- predominantly maple, a few ash -- for adult baseball leagues and some colleges.

"It just doesn't make sense to me," he says about MLB's abrupt rules change. He lights up a cigarette. "It doesn't seem fair." He smokes it, stubs it out, tosses it in a coffee can near a discarded bat.

The baseball bat is pure, sleek, sure-balanced and nearly perfectly shaped. It has masculine force, feminine curves. It feels primeval in the hands -- mystical/mythical -- a club held by opposable thumbs and complex-muscled hands. It has the heft and hardness of the first weapon, an extension of the arms, the shoulders, the vengeful brain. Security, survival, success! A vestigial reminder that humankind once battled -- and batted -- truly evil things. It's a threat-thwarter, a defense against the demons all around.

"The pitcher has got only a ball; I've got a bat," super-hitter Hank Aaron said, "so the percentage in weapons is in my favor and I let the fellow with the ball do the fretting."