Give metal bats the heave-ho
THE BEST argument for youth and high school baseball leagues switching from metal to wooden bats is that pro baseball teams use only wood. Team owners would sooner give up their luxury boxes than expose a $100 million pitcher like Daisuke Matsuzaka to the risk of a career-ending line drive off a metal bat. Granted, Little League batters do not connect with the same power as major leaguers, but youngsters' defensive reactions are not as good as Matsuzaka's. Massachusetts should follow New York City's lead and ban the metal bats.
The latest Massachusetts injury involving a metal bat occurred March 30, when Matt Cook, a freshman pitching batting practice for Hamilton-Wenham Regional High School, was hit with a line drive that fractured his skull and caused substantial bleeding and swelling in his brain. The student's parents expect a full recovery but only after many months of speech, physical, and occupational therapy. In addition to the ban passed Monday by the New York City Council, action against metal bats is under consideration in New Jersey following a severe injury to a 12-year-old boy last year.
Major League pitchers, most famously Herb Score of the Cleveland Indians, have suffered devastating injuries from wood-bat line drives. But such cases have been few and far between. The Major Leagues would never consider permitting metal bats, both because of the injury risk and because the greater speed and distance that metal bats impart to balls would make a mockery of all of the sport's batting records.
Even defenders do not question the extra drive that metal bats provide. Indeed, the bats' bigger sweet spot and the "trampoline effect" on hit balls are behind much of their appeal to young players. A 2001 study in the Journal of Applied Biomechanics found that balls hit by metal bats traveled at significantly higher speeds than balls hit by wood bats. But metal bat advocates say no comprehensive studies have been done showing conclusively that metal bats cause more injuries than wood ones.
This is true, but it is chiefly because so few youth teams use wood bats and severe injuries occur so rarely under any circumstances that it is difficult to compile meaningful data. In August, the Legislature held a hearing on safety problems in youth sports, including the risk of injury from metal-bat line drives. If the legislators had gone beyond simply an informational hearing and actually passed a law banning metal bats, serious injuries may have been avoided. It should not take another case like Matt Cook's to motivate the Legislature to take action. To parents, the safety of their children is at least as important as the well-being of Matsuzaka or Josh Beckett , who will never face the impact of a rocketing ball hit by a metal bat.
