How the Emerald Ash Borer Took Ash Bats Out of Major League Baseball

Baseball|Baseball History Is No Longer Written With Ash Bats

CLINTON TOWNSHIP, N.J. — On a glorious autumn afternoon, Rosa Yoo stepped disconnected a roadworthy astatine nan Round Valley Recreation Area and plunged into nan woods to execute nan grimmest task of her occupation arsenic nan New Jersey Forest Service’s wellness specialist: checking connected nan position of nan achromatic ash trees.

She arrived astatine a clearing, wherever a grove of ghostly grey husks trim haunting figures amid nan colorful foliage. As she suspected, nan trees, whose canopies a twelvemonth agone painted nan scenery successful golden and maroon, were dormant aliases hastily dying.

“There’s dormant ash trees everywhere,” Yoo said. “It’s difficult to find an ash character anyplace that hasn’t been infested.”

Infested, she means, by an invasive insect called the emerald ash borer, which for years has been munching its measurement crossed North America, leaving immense patches of dormant wood successful its wake.

Among autochthonal character species, ash represents a mini fraction of nan continental woodlands. But location is 1 arena wherever ash has historically reigned: successful baseball.

Most of shot history has been written pinch ash bats, from Joe DiMaggio’s 56-game hitting streak successful 1941 to Roger Maris’s 61 location runs successful 1961 to Mark McGwire’s 70 homers successful 1998.