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No one saw the baseball strike pitcher Brandon Patch's head
on a 2003 summer day in Montana. Instead, fans and teammates in attendance only
saw Patch fall to the ground, seriously injured. Patch would die four hours later
and the beginning of the end of metal baseball bats could be determined as his
legacy.
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 via Sambat Aluminum bats via Lineup Forms
Take a look at your favorite MLB club or local professional
team and you'll notice dozens of wooden bats on hand for sluggers to swing. Ash,
maple and bamboo bats are prevalent-Babe Ruth swung a hickory stick-but you
won't find a metal baseball bat. Take a look at a university or high school
baseball team and wood bats will be hard to find.
This inconsistency is hard to dismiss. Baseball is America's
pastime: as virtuous and simple as the ideals this country was founded
upon. Yet the debate of wood vs. metal
bats is changing the way the game is played, and possibly creating an unsafe
atmosphere for players.
Pictured: America
Metal vs. Wood: Performance
Metal bats were introduced to the sport in the 1970s as a
way to curb the costs of replacing wood bats. Original metal bats were crude
and often were imperfect, but by the '90s metal bats had progressed
significantly; enough so that both the NCAA and some high school athletic
sanctioning bodies had adopted protocol to regulate metal bats under the
equation of BESR (Ball Exit Speed Ratio).
Metal
bats are engineered from scratch, allowing manufacturers to better balance the
bat resulting in better control during the batter's swing. The hollow nature of a metal bat means a
larger 'sweet spot,' or the optimum spot for striking a pitched ball with the
bat. An
advantage of metal bats is their ability to put inside pitches into play, where
as players using wooden bats get 'jammed,' meaning they cannot get the bat
barrel around in time to contact the ball on the sweet spot. Using a wooden bat
for inside pitches usually results in a ground ball and in some cases, a broken
bat. Another
benefit of a metal bat is what is called the 'trampoline effect' which speaks
of the ability of a metal bat to bend after collision with the baseball. This
increases the acceleration of the ball off the bat by up to 7 mph.
There seems to be little debate that metal bats inflate
offense. In the 1998 College World Series, the first year before the NCAA
adopted any metal bat regulations, a record 62 home runs were hit in 14 games.
For sake of comparison, the MLB mean batting average for its 30 teams was .255
in 2011, while Division I NCAA teams finished with a mean batting average over
.300.
Can it be argued that technical progression is harming
America's second most popular sport? By any means metal bats definitively
augment statistics and can make evaluating college players difficult. The NCAA
knows this to be the case, as evidenced by their tightening of metal bat
restrictions prior to the 2011 season.
Some coaches worried about a wane in interest from more defensively-focused
games.
Not-famous and former professional ballplayer Ron Cacini speaks about metal vs. wood.
Metal vs. Wood: Safety
In the tragic case of 18-year-old Brandon Patch, it has been
argued-and legally concluded-that use of metal bats is what ended his life.
After a seven year legal case, Patch's parents sued bat manufacturer Louisville
Slugger for close to $1 million. Patch's case is hardly unique; other players
have been paralyzed or comatose from similar incidents.
Players have just milliseconds to react to a
batted ball, especially balls hit at over 100 mph which will arrive at the
pitcher in a blistering .38 seconds, no matter the type of bat. It's been
estimated that players need at least .32 seconds in order to make a decision on
the trajectory of a batted baseball. To understand how often batted baseballs accelerate over 100 mph, consider that in order to hit a home run the ball must be batted at least 110 mph. The high number of home runs in both the major leagues and in collegiate play should indicate the regularity with which balls are struck with such velocity. A ball traveling 110 mph will arrive at the pitcher in just .35 seconds.
 Via Daniel Russell, Kettering University. BBS: batted ball speed (initial velocity); Arrival time: time to reach pitcher; Arrival speed: velocity ball arrives at pitcher after drag;
So the difference between tragedy and a fly ball can be a
miniscule .03 seconds. Considering that data, it's amazing more serious
injuries don't occur each season. It does explain why a large number of
governments are considering bans on metal baseball bats.
In 2007, New York City passed a ban on playing with metal
baseball bats, making the municipality the first in the nation to ban metal
bats. Statewide bans in Montana, New York, California and New Jersey have been
proposed by legislators, but have been defeated with varying degrees of
success. As of this writing, New York City remains the only entity in the
country to have made the bats illegal, though many leagues are assuming a ban
is forthcoming and are already eliminating metal bats from competition.
Bat manufacturers employ lobbyists and cite the lack of
concrete evidence to keep metal bats in the hands of the playing faithful.
Proponents of the bans cite anecdotal evidence and a clear need to keep players
safe.
Metal vs. Wood: Opinion
As
an amateur baseball player I have staked out my own perspective on this unique
issue. I have some collegiate as well as elite wood-bat league and tournament
experience. As with any sport, some onus is on the player to understand the
risks associated with participation. A football player can get concussed, a
basketball player can have their tendons torn, a soccer player can get a compound
fracture their leg, and all of these can result in never being able to play the
sport again.
Considering that baseballs in excess of 100 mph are
regularly played, independent of the type of bat used, I feel as though metal
bat bans are ineffective. In the case of Brandon Patch, he had an estimated .37 seconds to react, meaning the ball was in flight at over 100 mph. If 7 mph is the largest difference between the acceleration of the ball between metal and wood bats, Brandon Patch would still have only had about .4 seconds to react if the ball was hit with wood. According to Daniel Russell's information, Patch would have needed at least 32 hundredths of a second to react, resulting in a tiny 8 hundredths of a second difference. That means Brandon Patch would have only been provided with another 3 hundredths of a second had the ball been hit with a wood bat.
Defense lawyers for
Louisville Slugger positioned that Patch's unfortunate death was an accident
and an anomaly; and I'm inclined to agree.
I will admit, much of my stance is anecdotal just like that of the ban's proponents, but I've
seen pitchers take line drives off the head and usually the pitcher sits out
the rest of the game and perhaps needs a trip to the hospital. Rare is it that
the result of a line drive to the skull results in such a tragedy as that of
Brandon Patch. In some instances, the pitcher even remains in the game to
continue play.I find it difficult to believe that if Brandon Patch was provided another .03 seconds that the disastrous accident that ended his life could have been avoided. I feel sympathetic for Patch's parents, who feel like a minor change in what is just a game could have saved their son's life. My sympathy doesn't determine my thoughts though and I think that turning Patch's unfortunate death while doing something he loved into a rallying cry to stop the natural mechanical progression of a beloved sport is misled.
Resources:
NCAA D1 Baseball
MLB stats on ESPN
Science Daily: Batter Up
Daniel Russell via Kettering U
NYT 1 & 2
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