Cape & Islands News

Frightening injuries prompt move away from aluminum bats

School Sports Heads Debate Safety Of Aluminum Bats
CCBL switched to wooden bats a quarter century ago

cross America more and more teams as well as entire leagues are following Cape Cod's example and switching from aluminum to wooden baseball bats.  Every few days  bring another story about a  serious injury attributed to the faster ball speed using the metal.

Jim McGonigle, spokesman for the Cape Cod League said he has no doubt that if the major leagues ever switched to aluminum bats the game would become too dangerous to play. Had, for example, the batter who hit a line drive that struck Red Sox pitcher David Wells on May 26 been using an aluminum bat, Wells would have suffered much more than a bruised right knee. "We'd be fixing him up for a prosthesis," McGonigle said, only half joking.

In New Jersey coaches and parents wonder how to prepare for the next time a young baseball player is hit in the chest in the aftermath of the freak accident like the one  that felled Steven Domalewski of Wayne NJ earlier this week.

The 12-year-old remained in a medically induced coma Friday, three days after a baseball batted with aluminum hit him in the chest and stopped his heart. He was revived at the scene, but the incident has provoked talk of new safety measures and gear. 

In a similar story in Illinois today, 

...(16 year-old pitcher) Bill Kalant never had a chance to get out of the way of the baseball that put him, as doctors told his father, "on the cliff of death."

The pitcher's parents, sitting a few feet away, heard the familiar "ping" of ball hitting a metal bat, followed an instant later by a sickening thud, but never caught a glimpse of the ball. It was more the position of Kalant's body -- still bent over from throwing a pitch, his glove still near the ground -- than what they'd seen that led coaches to conclude they'd never witnessed a ball hit so hard.

Moments later, the 16-year-old Oak Lawn High School sophomore lost consciousness and like that, even before he came out of a coma two weeks later, he was thrust into an emotional debate over the use of aluminum bats... (read the read here)

No clear evidence of difference but leagues switch to wood 

Although there is no empirical evidence that aluminum bats drive a baseball harder or faster than wood, the Cape Cod Baseball League, the most famous wood bat league in the nation which attracts the top college players in the country every summer here, moved to wooden bats in 1983, and today many other leagues are doing the same.

Here is a partial list of  the other leagues which switched to wood;

• Great Lakes Valley Conference (Division II college conference) 14 teams in Illinois, Indiana, Kentucky, Missouri and Wisconsin switched to wood bats in 1998.
• Northeast-10 Conference (Division II college conference) 15 schools throughout New England and New York snitched to wood bats in 2003.
• New York Collegiate Baseball League, 12-team league in New York which attracts college players from all over America.
• Central Illinois Collegiate League, 7 team league, switched to wood in 1990.
• Texas Collegiate League is that state's first collegiate wooden bat league has 9 teams.
• Sandlot Wood Bat League, 8-team summer league of college players in Tennessee whose younger age groups play their World Series games with wood bats.
• Nassau Suffolk Catholic High School Athletic Association, 7-team league on Long Island switched to wood bats last year.
• North Dakota High School Activities Association, the state's 105 high school teams will switch to wood bats next season.
• Greater Boston League, 12-team high school league that has switched to wood bats last year after a pitcher in the league was seriously injured by a batted ball.