frankly, I don’t think the switch can come soon enough. aside from being more dangerous, aluminum bats are just less aesthetically pleasing by far… no one goes to the yard to hear the “ping” of the bat. If the NCAA makes the switch, I really, highly doubt they’ll regret it. I think it would be a big step towards their drawing the kinds of fans they should be to the college game.

…and somebody will get a bat-splinter in the eye and file a lawsuit.

And aren’t there deadened aluminum bats which are de-tuned to perform more like wood and reduce the velocity of batted balls? Why wasn’t the league mandating their use?

That is a bullshit lawsuit.

Next time someone smashes my car window with a bat, I am suing the bat maker, not the thief.

What a crock. Sounds like the parents should have bought their son a bubble to play rather than sign him up for baseball. Regardless, wood or aluminum, a pitcher has very little time to get the hell out of the way or at least get a glove in the way of the ball.

The ONLY way that amateur baseball moves to wood bats is if they use composites. The composites probably won’t break, but there is still a possibility they could. Most amateur teams don’t have the funding to go through 100 wood bats in a season.

One part I do like about the wood bat idea is that for drafting purposes. Some players are great with aluminum, but when they are forced to start swinging wood, their hands swell up, nose starts running, and have uncontrollable but pee then are out of baseball within 2-3 years. Wood bats would give you a better idea of what your drafting.

I think they should have mentioned that he died earlier in the article. Overall, it’s a very weird case. I’m definitely sympathetic toward the family, but it really doesn’t seem like the bat manufacturer did anything wrong.

It’s questionable whether the type of bat had anything to do with the events, and I don’t think that a warning label on the bat would have made any difference.

But I do have sympathy toward certain aspects of the family’s case. If aluminum bats do increase the danger of injury and death, then that should be dealt with. A warning label is a weak way to do it. It would probably be better to examine manufacturing standards.

Of course, I hate the aesthetics of metal bats, so maybe I’m biased. Here’s Deadspin’s analysis of the verdict:

Most importantly, the jury did not find the bat defective, in effect saying, the aluminum bat did what it’s supposed to, and in doing so killed someone. This can’t be understated: it’s been proven, in a court of law, that aluminum bats are capable of killing.
…
Assuming a college player dies, it’ll still be the bat maker’s fault and not the NCAA or the school. That’s the precedent set.

However, there’s a potential chilling effect. Now that there is that precedent, it won’t be much of a leap for future lawyers to argue that a league would be negligent by continuing to use these bats. Next time this happens, an attorney will say, “You knew this put players’ lives at risk, but continued to use them anyway.” And without vouching for the strength of that argument, all they’d need to convince would be a handful of jurors.

I thought it was a cost issue for amateur players to use metal bats. Having to replace broken wooden bats for a cash-strapped public school program (i.e., San Jose State, as I know all too well) would likely spell doom for the team.

/Target on

Wood bats and metal bats are fundamentally different. This we know. Yet the level of engineering that can go into wood bats has pretty much peaked (until genetically engineered trees become the material for wood bats). Metal bats have been tuned over the years to be lighter (increasing bat speed, thus the velocity off the bat), stronger, and more flexible.

Metal bats flex when a ball hits them (while wood bats repel the ball or break), creating a “boomerang” effect, propelling the ball faster off the bat – this is the primary reason that the ball travels faster off the bat, no the actual constituents of the material. It is in the interest of the companies creating these bats to make bats that can hit a baseball harder and farther. Additionally, metal bats have much larger sweet spots.

In my mind, we have metal bat manufacturers with goals that are at odds with the safety of players (particularly pitchers). Finding a manufacturer at fault may not be the ideal solution towards some sort of reform, but often things don’t change until somebody loses (or the threat of them losing) money.

Did anyone else notice that Dusty Baker has been hired as a figurehead for the pro-aluminum bat lobby?
http://www.dtmba.com/DustyBaker.pdf

why didn’t they sue Spalding for making a defective ball?