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Metal baseball bats banned in NYC high schools
Filed under: Teens, Health & Safety: Babies, Day Care & Education, That's Entertainment
Baseball season is upon us and kids everywhere will soon be swinging the bats again. In New York high schools, those bats will be not be made of metal. Although Little League Baseball claims there is no evidence that metal bats are more dangerous than wooden ones, the City Council in New York has voted to ban them from the largest school system in the country.
If metal bats create more velocity when hitting a ball than wooden bats, they must cause more injuries, right? Opponents of the metal bat ban say there is no scientific evidence to suggest this. Mayor Bloomberg himself thought the question of bat safety should be left up to those who run the baseball leagues, not the government, and vetoed the bill.
But the City Council overrode his veto and voted 41-4 to ban them. "What we're trying to do is reduce risk," said Councilman James Oddo, who sponsored the bill.
The City Council's actions have some crying foul. One group who opposes the ban plans to file a federal lawsuit and Stephen D. Keener, president of Little League, issued a statement expressing his organization's disappointment in the City Council's decision to "override the logic and sensibility of Mayor Bloomberg's veto."
There may not be scientific proof that metal bats cause more injuries than wooden bats, but it makes sense that they would. My experience with baseball is limited, but if metal bats are preferred because they increase the speed of the ball, isn't that also a good reason not to let children use them?
If metal bats create more velocity when hitting a ball than wooden bats, they must cause more injuries, right? Opponents of the metal bat ban say there is no scientific evidence to suggest this. Mayor Bloomberg himself thought the question of bat safety should be left up to those who run the baseball leagues, not the government, and vetoed the bill.
But the City Council overrode his veto and voted 41-4 to ban them. "What we're trying to do is reduce risk," said Councilman James Oddo, who sponsored the bill.
The City Council's actions have some crying foul. One group who opposes the ban plans to file a federal lawsuit and Stephen D. Keener, president of Little League, issued a statement expressing his organization's disappointment in the City Council's decision to "override the logic and sensibility of Mayor Bloomberg's veto."
There may not be scientific proof that metal bats cause more injuries than wooden bats, but it makes sense that they would. My experience with baseball is limited, but if metal bats are preferred because they increase the speed of the ball, isn't that also a good reason not to let children use them?
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ReaderComments (Page 1 of 1)
4-25-2007 @ 12:20AM
Heather said...When I played baseball I hated using metal bats. When I hit the ball the vibrations stung my hands. The wooden ones that never happened.
Reply
4-25-2007 @ 10:17AM
A said...um... yeah... getting shmucked in the head by a wooden bat hurts a lot less then a metal bat.
I don't know much about bat design either but because a ball goes further when hit with a metal bat doesn't necessarily mean more injuries. Could the injuries be more severe? I doubt it. I guess the best analogy I can think of is cars. It used to be the more solid the car the safer you were but these days, it's the opposite. There's design involved to allow for the energy of a collision to be abosrbed. I suspect that with a metal bat there's a little more "rebound" from the bat after it contacts the ball.
A couple other differences:
1) a ball is a hard surface whereas a person has soft flesh in most areas. The extra "rebound" gets more evenly distributed across the soft flesh. Try swinging both types into a sand pit or pile of dirt. You'll probably find that the vibrations will be the same. Do that on a hard surface and you'll probably get more vibration from the metal bat.
2) Unless the bat is being used as a weapon, a flying bat is going to hurt. There's no way to tell which part of a bat is going to hit a specific part of the body. In which case, does it really matter if it's metal or wood?
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