Dennis Tessicini calls on high school players and the Volcanoes to test his idea.

As far as Dennis “Nemo” Tessicini is concerned, lighter is better.

When Tessicini was coaching baseball at Taft High School, he questioned the effectiveness of heavy bats used in the on-deck circle. He figured they weren’t providing youngsters with the necessary help.

“I started asking myself questions,” he said. “What does the on-deck circle do for you? Why can’t we make it easier and safer?

“I didn’t think it was functional. The youngsters were swinging those bats slow, and it appeared dangerous. I thought, why not make something to increase bat speed with a lighter bat?”

When Tessicini retired in 1998 after 20 years at Taft, no one had perfected a lighter bat to use warming up.

Then Tessicini awoke one night with the idea.

“I missed teaching and coaching. I was lonely and bored,” he said. “So I figured this was it. I was going to do it, test students and make a video.”

Tessicini designed a prototype and brought his sample bat to Master Woodworks of Salem, who developed the final product.

“We designed the shape to get the proper length and weight he was looking for,” said Thomas Paradis, production manager at Master Woodworks. “We refined it and fine-tuned it.”

The bat is 33 inches in length, and the barrel is eight inches long and 1¾-inch in diameter. But the main difference from average-size bats is the weight: 16 ounces. Most aluminum bats used by high school athletes are 27-33 ounces.

With softball and baseball seasons approaching, Tessicini’s timing is good. He has the bat on the market for $49. It’s available in Lincoln City and Newport shops. He is hoping to make the bat available at Anderson’s Sporting Goods in Salem.

The video, which sells for $29, shows different age groups doing drills and tests with the bat. It shows Shane Porterfield of Cascade High School swinging at pitches from different angles, 45 students from Taft High in an experimental group being tested with the speed bat and regular bat and four players from the Salem-Keizer Volcanoes taking swings in a control group.

Porterfield, a senior pitcher-first baseman at Cascade, said his bat speed increased 4 mph during tests taken in a six-week period last summer.

“It’s a good product if coaches give it a chance,” he said. “You’ll see an increase in hitting.”

Tessicini said the drills have shown that players get a bat speed increase of 4.6 mph in three weeks with the lighter bat.

“Batters normally have one-half second to see a pitch,” he said. “You have one-quarter second to read the location and see what type of pitch it is, and the last one-quarter second is mental. Am I going to swing or not? With exceptional bat speed, you have more time to watch the ball.”

Tessecini said he feels increased bat speed is a key to a hitter’s improvement.

“It’s an equalizer to a pitcher’s speed,” he said. “It gives you more time to read the location of the ball and type of pitch. In softball, five mph faster could mean 20-25 additional feet. You could take 120 swings a day in my drill. That’s five times the normal number of swings. It increases muscle memory without the fear of injury.”

The control group experiment with the Volcanoes last summer showed that bat speed doesn’t improve using a normal-sized bat.

Tessicini and Bob Plantz, also a retired coach, recorded the bat speed of four Volcanoes during six swings then did it again three weeks later.

“We were hoping they wouldn’t show any improvement,” Tessicini said. “If they did, our experiment was wrong.”

Plantz, who was head coach at McKay High School from 1979-84, is conducting classes at Keizer Courthouse on swing techniques and using the speed bat.

“We just finished our first class, and every kid improved his bat speed,” he said. “The speed bat has balance and the feel of a real bat even though it’s lighter.”

WHERE: Stores in Lincoln City, Newport; Internet web site, http://www.speedbat.com; Bob Plantz, 393-6358; Dennis Tessicini, (541) 764-3313.

WHY: To improve bat speed for softball and baseball players.

COST: Bat, $49; video, $29.95; bat and video, $79.