The inventor continued:
The object of my invention is to provide a ball-bat which shall produce a rotary or spinning motion of the ball in its flight to a higher degree than is possible with any present known form of ball-bat, and thus to make it more difficult to catch the ball, or, if caught, to hold it....
With these said results, owing to the peculiar form of my bat, the game becomes more difficult to play, and therefore much more interesting and exciting....
I think the fact that this didn't catch on is a mixed bag. I'm all for making baseball more exciting, but—contrary to another claim in the patent—this surely would make games even longer.
From Ptak Science Books, via Boing Boing.
