Posted on 05/17/2008 10:20:12 PM PDT by MissouriConservative
WAYNE, N.J. — A New Jersey couple, whose son was struck in the chest with a line drive, is planning to sue the maker of a metal baseball bat used in the game.
An attorney says Domalewski will need millions of dollars worth of medical care for the rest of his life.
(Excerpt) Read more at foxnews.com ...
You learn the difference. You made an empty and erroneous statement that was ridiculous.
Here's another one. "bats manufactured these days do not allow enough “reaction time” for many of these hits."
Studies in the American Sports Medicine Journal indicate a pitcher's ability to react to a ball hit from 60 feet, 6 1/2 inches away (the major league regulation distance) stops after 155 km/h. A 2002 report for the Journal for the American College of Sports Medicine found 37 per cent of balls hit by an aluminum bat reached 160 km/h, while just 2 per cent hit with a wooden bat did.
So therefore my staement was neither empty nor erroneous, but I guess you were too busy spouting your opinion and calling it fact to read that and learn something.... FACT
The study is BS and these numbers don't apply to little league anyway. The difference is only 4ft/s, or 10ms out of 415ms. A pitcher has plenty of time to catch the ball in that time.
"A 2002 report for the Journal for the American College of Sports Medicine found 37 per cent of balls hit by an aluminum bat reached 160 km/h, while just 2 per cent hit with a wooden bat did."
Not in little league. The bats in little league are regulated to be and limited to a certain equivalent performance level and the batters can't hit the ball that hard.
"And Domalewski, like Green, was pitching from just 45 feet away.
Little league... and the balls don't approach the speeds given. The bats are also limited to eqivalent performance levels. If the pitcher couldn't handle ducking, or catching the hit, he couldn't handle it if it came off a wooden bat. It's that simple. In the case of adult games, if 10ms out of 415 is insufficient to overwhelm a players reaction time. It's that simple. A good player gets it done in 200ms, or half that time at the most.
"Since the introduction of the metal bat in 1971, it has been remodelled many times to improve performance. The steady push to make bats more powerful prompted Jack MacKay to quit his job as a metal bat designer for Louisville Slugger in 1989."
BS! The biggest increase in performance for the same hitter is a measly 5%. McKay's a thumb sucking twit.
"Non-wood bats spread the weight (of the ball) out across the bat," Keener said. "It's easier to handle, to swing and, for a lot of kids, to have a greater success playing the game."
Whatever, that's his opinion. The part about spreading the weight of the ball across the bat is bogus. I prefer wooden bats. The only advantage for little leaguers is that the bat may make it easier to swing, so the batter can hit the ball at all.
" "This is the kind of technology you ought to be throwing at bin Laden, not some baseball pitcher," MacKay told The Sporting News in 2002. "We've overengineered it. It's the worst thing I ever did. Aluminum bats and wood bats are not even in the same ballpark."
Ridiculous rubbish! The normal increase is 2%, if that much.
"So therefore my staement was neither empty nor erroneous,"
Your statement: "Actually the way they design the metal bats these days, it is a safety hazard." is absolutely ridiculous.
I’ll bet there is/has been someone in this country who has been maimed or even killed by someone who hit a ball off a wooden bat. If that evidence gets presented in court, the couple will lose its case!
Consider the analogy to a car with a product safety issue. Sure there are accidents, and one assumes a certain risk every time they get into one, but if there is something inherently dangerous about the design of the car or the safety of the manufacturing of a certain part there are lawsuits which are sometimes successful.
I only read the blurb, but if the bat was illegal by league standards they might have a point. My church softball league bans most “live” bats, but we’re just a bunch of dorks running around in the park. Maybe that league did the same, in which case it’s not the manufacturer’s fault, but the league probably doesn’t have pockets as deep.
Seeing my brothers nose pointed toward his shoulder and gushing blood after being hit by a line drive from a 10 year old turned me off of pitching forever.
Thank God my son plays a safe game...lacrosse!!!!
BWWWHHHHAAAAAA, I almost hurt myself when that sunk in...
You are truly evil...funny..but evil ;-)
I might score it a hit if it was too hot to handle, but then the runs would be earned.
IF, and thats a BIG IF, I were to fault anybody, it would lay at the feet of the 'doogooder, everybody needs to feel like a MLB star' mentality...
you just cant regulate away every freak occurance in nature...
The science is pretty clear, balls do leave metal bats with more velocity than when hit with a wooden bat. Not sure what study you are quoting other than perhaps they found no conclusive evidence that this speed results in more injuries.. but there is no doubt or debate that balls do come off metal bats with higher velocities.
Maple bats are stupid and dangerous and should be and I’m sure will be banned... everyone just jumped on the bandwagon of these stupid things when they found out Bonds was using them.
Perhaps they were noting that the total number of injuries remained the same because the increased number of ball-velocity injuries generally matched the number of injuries which were no longer occurring from shattered bats.
My son has two teammates who wear chest protectors underneath their jerseys. Both of them pitch. They are 10 and 11. In March, my son was catching for one of these boys. He took a ball off the end of a bat onto his right hand. You could hear the cracking sound of the ball hitting his hand. I thought he had been hit by the pitched ball, and I was alarmed because the kid who was pitching is the hardest/fastest throwing kid that age that I’ve ever seen. Anywho, son stayed in the game despite the hand swelling and turning nice colors. He told me the ball popped off the bat onto his hand. I’m not sure if that made the ball faster or slower. It all happened so fast. He then played in the next game as well in the rain and cold. Amazingly, the hand was not broken, though it is still sore when he squeezes a ball hard. It’s been almost two months since it happened.
Unfortunately, coaches and parents and often league officials don’t think before putting some kids on the mound. We played games last year where we would let inexperienced players pitch. We wouldn’t do this against just any team but against teams that didn’t have power hitters. But the other team would do the same thing, and their inexperienced pitchers were clueless about many defensive aspects of the game. We had five 12-year-old power hitters going against tiny 9-year-olds. Thankfully, none of our boys hit back at the pitcher. They were more interested in getting the ball over the fence. But we did have kids who were trained by adults to hit line drives back at pitchers. I hadn’t thought about the ethics of such. I do know that if a parent yells for a kid to hit a line drive that the opposing pitcher gets real nervous.
There was one game last year when one of our batters hit a shot at the second baseman. He was 9. He should not have been playing with 12-year-olds. It knocked the boy out. But his dad thought he was the greatest player on the planet and would not put the boy in the outfield or the bench.
The hitting coaches we know teach kids to hit straight back at the pitcher. Hard. Our “mean” son loves to do exactly that. Our other son can only see the glory in hitting over the fence. :) Guess which one has the better batting average? Also, the “mean” son loves to use wooden bats. Unfortunately, they break the wooden bats within one or two hitting outings.
Those people would be Calvinists. ;-)
I think that comment falls under the category of “demonstrating the absurd by being absurd.”
That's ten mph, or 10%, and that is a very significant difference.
I doubt any Little League batters are getting that kind of speed, but considering that the pitcher is less than 40 feet away, that ball can get back there in a big hurry. Major leaguer pitchers from a 60 foot mound get hit often, and occasionally injured. But being adults, they are not likely to get a 'heart stopping' blow to the chest. In a kid, with less muscle mass, it can happen pretty easily.
The answer regardless of the type of bats is for little league teams to require the pitchers to wear a chest protector. I know some leagues already require it.
Funny. 50 years ago, when I was a 'young one' I could hit a ball pretty damn good with a wooden bat.
You're right. The state should step in, and take the child from these irresponsible breeders, and appoint an attorney for him to sue the parents.
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