653 Wood Maple Baseball Bats

Note: Bats are not recommended for baseballing use

A quick note: This is the first edition of Assigned that was not edited by the esteemed Martin Rickman. Martin recently took a job as the Executive Editor of Digital at Fox Sports. Many many thanks to him for his help in starting this project, and I’m sure you’ll all join me in wishing him the best of his luck at his new stop.

Listed for $4,571

This is a Pallet of 653 33" Blemished Baseball Bats. These bats are unfinished and are not ready for use. They are not sanded or trimmed. These bats may have any of the following blemishes in the wood: knot marks, dark grain marks, splits, warps, chips, etc. The bats are not recommended for game use. The pallet is a mix of model profiles. Barrel & handle styles will vary.

Let me address what, undoubtedly, is your first question: Can I just buy some of these 653 baseball bats?

No. Absolutely not. Foolish of you to have even asked in the first place. The listing offers you no hope of a partial purchase. The singular “bat” is never used, and the seller takes care to remind you at the description’s beginning and end that you are being offered the pallet of 653 bats.

Even the price reinforces the bulk nature of this transaction. $4,571 divided by 653 comes to an even $7 per bat, and our seller is not offering you any discount from that rate for buying the entire lot, because that’s the only option you have. Want to spend $350 on 50 bats? BEGONE. You’re ponying up $4,571 or nothing.

Having cleared that up, you’re now wondering what on earth you’re supposed to do with 653 baseball bats that “are not recommended for game use.” If you really love furniture made from baseball bats, you’ve got a lot of material to work with here. Perhaps you would like to open a theme restaurant named something like Slugger’s and featuring menu items like the Ground Rule Double Cheeseburger with Sacrifice Fries. Or you might want to throw baseball bats onto your fire during the winter months for warmth, either because you hate the sport or because it feels like the kind of indulgence a comically rich person would perform.

(Please note: I have no idea if Blemished Baseball Bats are suitable for burning, and I do not recommend you use anything I write about in a fire without consulting your local fire station first.)

Oh wait, one more: you could start an underground fighting league where the only rule is “you have to use one of these bats as a weapon.” That’s a very bad idea, but it is, technically, an idea.

If it seems like I’m stretching, well, that’s because you’re buying 653 baseball bats that you cannot use for baseball. Facebook Marketplace has many strange items, but most of them are suitable for their intended purpose, or at least potentially repairable to that state. The use case for 653 working baseball bats is much clearer.

But the real question isn’t what you could do with these bats, because you’re not going to spend $4,571 on this item. The question is: What was the owner’s plan when they acquired them in the first place? The answer could go in so many different directions. They intended to buy working bats but were defrauded! They meant to buy $6.53 worth of blemished bats but put that number into the wrong part of the order form! They always intended to flip them, confident that the blemished bat market could only rise! They never got the liquor license for Slugger’s, which meant they couldn’t sell Rum Runners In Scoring Position!

There’s one more piece of relevant information about this listing, and I think it’s the seller doing you a solid, even if it hurts his chances to move this pallet o’ bats. 653 Wood Maple Baseball Bats are only available for pickup; our bat hoarder will not bring them to your house or ship them.

Perhaps you find this inconvenient - you want 653 bats, but you don’t want the hassle of loading them up into your Chrysler Pacifica. I think of it in a different way. When you’re using a computer and about to take an action that will be difficult or impossible to revoke, like deleting a crucial file, the system will often respond with three important words: Are you sure?

And the seller of these bats has built that same failsafe into your real world transaction. There is no chance of you drunkenly buying these one night, forgetting about it, and then waking up four days later to find a giant pallet of baseball bats sitting on your doorstep. You must see these bats with your own eyes, gaze upon their baseball-less nature, and then, one final time, tell the universe that yes, yes you do want to claim the burden of owning 653 Wood Maple Baseball Bats.

In the event that you do, here’s the math you’ll probably need one day: to make a profit of $1 per bat off your original purchase price, you will need to list these for $5,224.