Well, this is kind of terrifying:
Some 500,000 baseball bats were sold in Russia last year, Moscow’s traffic police chief said on Tuesday, presuming that buyers were drivers as the game is not popular in the country.
“Road conflicts with drivers using weapons, bats and knives have become more frequent,” Viktor Kovalenko said, adding that car salons have started selling baseball bats.
According to a TASS report from last September that surfaced on Reddit on Thursday, baseball bat sales have skyrocketed in Russia. But according to police chief Viktor Kovalenko, Russians purchased only one baseball total and one set of gloves in 2014. His conclusion, then, is that Russians are buying up baseball bats to help settle road disputes.
Presumably some naive and earnest folks in the shipping department down at Louisville Slugger figured the sport was enjoying a boom in popularity in Russia, but, apparently, nay. People do play baseball in Russia and the nation has fielded a national team at European championships dating back to the early 90s, but interest in the sport there fails to match even the low standards of Western Europe. It seems strange that they could be playing any baseball at all there with only one new ball for an entire year, but then maybe youth programs rely on donations or maybe Kovalenko’s stats are a bit off. I called Rawlings this morning to see if they could provide any sales information, but I have not yet heard back and it seems likely Russian road-ragers purchase their bats from third-party suppliers.
Hey, it’s a start. Maybe some enterprising Russian will open up a batting cage to give angry drivers another outlet for their rage, and a way to put all their baseball bats to good use. In the meantime, I will not plan on driving in Russia anytime soon.
