PHOENIX—Observing the positive result achieved by using his bat to smash a baseball into left field, Diamondbacks right fielder Justin Upton announced to teammates and coaches Monday that he had been motivated to study the hitting capacity of wood, the naturally occurring organic lignin-cellulose composite. "I decided to acquire a number of books about wood from the library, and I was quite surprised to read that wood comes from trees or shrubs," said Upton, who admitted that the new information had precipitated a personal paradigm shift in regard to his assumptions about baseball bats. "While there is some knowledge I can acquire from reading, I believe it will eventually be necessary to perform a number of trials to test the interactions of kinetic energy, acceleration, wood, and ball in a controlled batting-cage environment." In 2007, Upton conducted an experiment to determine the number of stitches on a baseball, but abandoned the endeavor when he concluded that baseballs were too curvy to establish a proper tally.