Danger at the diamond

Injuries that resulted from shattered maple bats have prompted Major League Baseball to look into better safety measures.
Local leagues that use wooden bats, like the Valley Baseball League and the Rockingham County Baseball League, could be in the cross-hairs if new regulations are instated.
“I haven’t seen much of a problem of bats breaking excessively in our league,” VBL President David Biery said.
Generals coach Lawrence Nesselrodt said that the bat design is part of the problem.
“A lot of players like to use a thin handle, it gives them a better hold on the bat and the ball gets hit farther,” Nesselrodt said. “What happens is that there is no balance with the barrel. That causes bats to break. I think we need to regulate the thickness of the handle to balance the bat.”
Nesselrodt also mentioned that the quality of bats used has gone south.
“If the quality of the product is poor, breaking will happen,” Nesselrodt said.
“A cheaper grain of wood used in bats has contributed to the recent headlines,” said bat manufacturer Sam Holman, the founder of The Original Maple Bat Company in Gatineau, Quebec.
Holman testified and gave his recommendation to the MLB safety and hazard committee on June 24.
“In my 12 years of making maple bats, I never had as many complaints, until recently,” Holman said. “Too many manufacturers are selling bats that are ineffective — by ignorance or by intention. That has to be looked into more than it has in the past. The quality is not there anymore, so something has to be done. Who knows what companies are actually selling?”
Holman said that the problem can best be fixed from the top.
“The safety commission should not take this long to come to a decision. This has happened before this season. They set the standard for all leagues,” Holman said. “I will shout it from the roof-tops if I have to. The major leagues have been asleep at the wheel. If they regulate the bats, the handles and even extend the netting to protect fans, other leagues will follow.”
Pat Courtney, MLB’s vice president of public relations, said the league is doing whatever it can to remedy the situation.
“There are a million theories of why the bats are breaking, whether it’s the size of the handle to the quality of the bat. We are still collecting our data and looking at it from all corners,” Courtney said. “We are looking at the ash bats, maple bats and hired Dr. [James] Sherwood at the University of Massachusetts [-Lowell] and a statistician at Harvard to get more information. We are looking at every avenue.”
The baseball research center located at the University of Massachusetts-Lowell is currently testing the performance and resilience of bats for the MLB.
Calls to UMASS-Lowell by The News Virginian were unanswered.
Courtney said there should be a decision before the end of the baseball season and is aware that leagues like the VBL are keeping an eye on the situation.
“We do set the standard for the wooden bat leagues. I know the commissioner [Bud Selig] wants something done very quickly,” Courtney said.
Financially, local leagues do not always have the funds to buy better lumber.
That didn’t stop RCBL Commissioner Mark Siciliano. He reworked the league’s contract with its supplier, Dallas-based D-Bats, to get a better grain of bat.
“I was noticing that a lot of our bats were breaking too frequently. It was a safety concern for our players and a financial concern for us,” Siciliano said. “Because we get a ton of bats from them on a financial stipend, the bats we got were sub-par. So we had to leverage to get better bats when we renewed our contract.”
A spokesman for D-Bats was unavailable for comment.
Some players in the local wooden bat leagues were indifferent about the subject.
“I haven’t experienced much breakage with my bats,” Diamondbacks slugger Ben Wise said. “But if the majors decide it’s too dangerous, then of course we will probably follow what they decide to do. I’m not too worried about it right now.”
The Generals’ Brandon Sizemore said he has not given the situation much thought.
“I haven’t seen a lot of injuries due to broken bats, but if it protects the fans, that’s different,” Sizemore said.
Generals pitching coach Derek McDaniel said there should be a combination of safety measures issued to prevent injuries.
“I think all coaches should wear a helmet while standing in the coach’s box,” McDaniel said. “Netting should be higher … they do a good job here [at Kate Collins field].
“Batters should have a decent bat, but when you are at this level it becomes expensive.”
Holman said players have to take responsibility, too, for not changing bats.
“If you use one bat for a season, it is going to break,” Holman said. “Too many players are taking that risk, and that’s when injuries will happen. It becomes a danger to everyone, but companies have not set the same standards that we have. It’s not the maple bats,” he said.
Major League Baseball has taken some other steps in evaluating the maple bat situation, enlisting more studies to be performed by the University Of Wisconsin.
While the MLB awaits the results from those studies, wooden bat leagues may feel the impact, and some are formulating ways to deal with the reverberation that likely will come from an MLB decision.