Dunn has switched from maple to ash bats even though he believes it might cost him a few homers. Because maple shatters, he fears one of the shards is "going to end up sticking out of somebody's neck".

Maybe this is what J.P. Ricciardi was talking about - the guy obviously lacks the killer instinct.

Contrast that with Roger Clemens - no doubt roided to the gills - intentionally hurling one toward one of the opposition's best players in the World Series.

Just as Raskolnikov realized in Dostoyevski's Crime and Punishment:

I maintain that if the discoveries of Kepler and Newton could not have been made known except by sacrificing the lives of one, a dozen, a hundred or more men, Newton would have had the right, would indeed have been in duty bound... to eliminate the dozen or hundred men for the sake of making his discoveries known to the whole of humanity.

Dunn needs to realize similarly that he's duty bound to use the maple bat, irrespective of the lives it costs. There are hundreds of thousands of fantasy owners (and dozens of Nationals fans) who are counting on him.