Try this the next time you’re going to fly. Show up at airport security holding a maple baseball bat that has been shattered just above the handle, leaving a 30-inch cross between a war club and a javelin.

In other words, a deadly weapon …

The Homeland Security cops would have you in handcuffs.

A great number of these potentially lethal weapons have become the bat of choice at any level of baseball where wood bats are mandated by rule. Professional players love them, even though you can see some hitters go through a half-dozen of them in a game. Even though you can no longer watch a major-league game without seeing these not-so-splendid splinters pinwheeling toward a pitcher or an infielder about to make a play on the mace that just launched the baseball.

They flat love them. Estimates place the percentage of big-league players who use maple somewhere around 70 percent, but that may be low. Ballplayers will try anything they perceive will improve their game – steroids, anyone? – and since Barry Bonds started swinging a black maple bat custom made for him in Canada by a manufacturer named Sam Holman, they have proliferated like, well, trees.

Dating to 1884, the official bat of major league baseball was the ubiquitous Louisville Slugger manufactured by the Hillerich & Bradsby Company. Their bats came – and still come – in an infinite combination of sizes, shapes, lengths and weights, from the thick-handled cudgels favored by the contact hitters of yore to the spindly, thin-handled, big-headed, 30-32 ouncers favored by the Bat Speed Generation. A rival company, Adirondack (now owned by Rawlings), produced a handsome bat favored by many modern-era sluggers, including Willie Mays, Duke Snider and Mike Schmidt.

The Louisville Slugger and Adirondack were both superb bats that shared a common trait. They were made of northern ash. When ash broke, it did not leave a hitter holding a six-inch handle in his bottom hand while the rest of it went anywhere from into the crowd to into a neck of a coach, or off the head of an umpire. Or even off the shoulder of the guy swinging it, which is what happened to Phillies outfielder Geoff Jenkins on July 20 in a bizarre home-plate accident.

Pirates hitting coach Don Long was in the dugout April 15 in Dodger Stadium when All-Star outfielder Nate McLouth, hitting in the eighth inning, lined a double to right – with a maple bat that split lengthwise. Long was watching the play unfold when the now familiar spear flew into the dugout like a runaway helicopter blade and struck the coach several inches below his left eye.

Citizens Bank Park in Philadelphia is a prime site for an inevitable maple-bat disaster with the living room proximity to the action in its field-level box seats.

It is never a bad idea for fans lucky enough to score those choice tickets to bring a glove – more for protection of self and family members than to collect souvenirs.

Well, here’s some free advice from me to you. For about $190, you can go online and buy yourself a “like new” official, police-used, body vest.

Think of how cool it will look covered with colorful Phillies logos. Including, of course, a large bull’s-eye.