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The beauty of Home Run Derby is that it does not require much in the way of equipment. A bat, some balls, a plate, a pen and paper to track home runs, and an open space is all you need to play. The first piece of equipment used in today's Home Run Derby was a home plate fashioned out of an old Nike showbox. While playing as a youngster, my Dad and I needed a home plate. Cutting up the shoebox from my new Nikes seemed like a good idea. I cut a flat plate out of it and tried coloring it black with a permanent marker, but it ran out before I was finished. I threw my hands up, said "Fuck it!" and wrapped the whole thing in clear tape to make it waterproof. Then I colored the other side with red permanent marker. We still use the same home plate today (when it's not windy).
The first bats used for Home Run Derby were plain, black whiffleball bats. We didn't use tape on them at first but soon discovered that a few layers of tape on the barrel would strengthen the bat and make it easier to hit home runs. They taped bats in special ways and experimented with different materials.This strategic bat-taping would be a topic of conversation and debate for many years. Over the years, we experimented with different kinds of bats, from ugly yellow ones to ridiculously overtaped ones. On one sunny afternoon, one of Mitch's heavily-taped bats simply melted on the sidewalk. We tried wood bats, Little League bats, and full-sized metal bats, but none were as effective as our taped plastic bats. Our most recent discovery, the longer and harder Easton ProStixx bat, has proven to be the best bat yet.
The first balls we used for Home Run Derby were the half-holed whiffleballs that came with our plastic bats. After a few swings with our taped bats, these balls would deform and crack. We tried to save some of the dying balls by covering them with tape, but eventually, even those would be destroyed. We tried all kinds of balls, from larger balls with round holes to balls with a nearly solid surface, but all of them were inadequate for Home Run Derby. We began an active search for the perfect Home Run Derby ball. While roaming the aisles of Academy, Rob came upon "smooth polyballs" made by ATEC. Completely smooth, hollow, and resilient, they looked promising. They were more expensive than the others, but Rob thought that these might be the first balls which could withstand our mighty bats.
His theory proved correct. The solid ball kept its shape when we hit it. ATEC ball was quickly adopted as the official ball of Home Run Derby. After losing them down storm drains and in the backyards of neighbors, the new problem was replacing our perfect balls. They proved elusive, and we had to order them directly from the company if we wanted to keep playing. Sadly, these balls are no longer manufactured by ATEC (as of December 2005).
A couple of years later, Rob found a similar ball made by P&L Sports (now available from either Omni Sports Technologies or Axiom Sports). These balls were identical in size but made from a different kind (or different thickness) of plastic. When we hit them, they quickly and violently split into pieces. P&L Sports later produced a version of smooth polyball identical to our the ATEC balls. But one day, P&L Sporth changed their formula.The smooth polyballs that P&L Sports manufactures are now "heavier for durability." Harder and heavier than the old balls (1.2 ounces vs. 0.9 ounces), the new balls are immune to the retarding effects of air resistance and ball spin. Any decently hit ball is probably a home run. While the farthest home runs with the old balls traveled about 140 feet, home runs with the new balls travel 180 feet and more. The new balls were "juiced," and home run numbers have gone through the roof.
The increased home run totals mean that rounds are now interrupted for shagging purposes (not sex) and take much longer to complete. New records have rendered the older, more "realistic" records useless. As a result, we have been forced to rethink the game of Home Run Derby. We are considering the use of real baseball bats to reduce bat speed and bring the numbers back to "acceptable" levels.