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Survey Says: All Hail The New Balls

Does any sport engender more discussion and controversy about the equipment used to play it than college baseball? Imagine if NFL fans and media spent 20 years hyper-ventilating about “Deflategate” instead of just two weeks.

Because the bats have been a hot topic in college baseball since at least the 1990s, when Gorilla Ball reigned. A switch to the less-potent “minus-3” bats in 1998 coincided with the expansion of the NCAA tournament field to 64 teams and ushered in the sport’s modern age. And for a while, equipment talk faded into the background.

Then came the rise[…]