Jim Darby is wondering what all the fuss is about.
Now, you have to understand that Jim Darby is a reasonable man, a father, and understands why the safety of our children comes into question when three of them had their skulls fractured this summer after being hit by batted balls while pitching.
But he is also the vice president of promotions for Easton Sports as well as the chair of the Sporting Goods Manufacturers Association’s public relations committee for baseball and softball, so you also have to understand this isn’t good public relations for him.
So after reading last week’s column calling into question the safety of aluminum bats, Darby sent me an e-mail.
“Injury statistics kept by the various governing bodies show that baseball is one of the, if not the, safest sports played in this country,” Darby wrote.
“However, as with any activity, there will be occasional accidents. As you pointed out in your article, players getting hit by a batted ball can happen when wood and non wood bats are being used.”
Jim said he would like to talk and was willing to pass on information he thought would be useful. So, he did.
There was a stack of articles about professional athletes being hurt by batted balls off wooden bats. There was even one about a high school player in Salt Lake City, Utah, killed by a batted ball off a wooden bat while throwing batting practice. That can’t be ignored and gives credence to the suggestion of one coach that if the balls were adjusted, and not wound as tight, there would be fewer players getting hurt.
And, Darby said, players get hurt more often sliding into a base or colliding with walls or other players in the outfield. Look no farther than the collision Thursday night between Carlos Beltran and Mike Cameron of the Mets that left Beltran with a concussion and Cameron with broken bones around the face.
What Darby said, and the material he sent along, was very compelling, and made a strong case to back his claim that aluminum bats are safe as wood.
There were letters from representatives of the National High School Baseball Coaches Association, Little League Baseball, Babe Ruth and Pony League stating the game is safe with aluminum bats.
So, was it an anomaly, as Darby and others have suggested, that three kids from our state were seriously injured this summer? I was having a hard time buying that.
Darby said there is no data supporting the claim that aluminum bats cause more injuries than wooden bats at the youth level. And he’s right, because there is no data. After all, no youth league exclusively uses wood.
I decided to do my own test. And, as unscientific as it was, I think you might find it interesting.
My test subject was Alex Parenteau — a.k.a. “The Baby Bull.”
Alex was the best 9-year-old in the Keene Cal Ripken League this summer, probably one of the top players for his age in the state.
During the state tournament, at which Keene was runner-up, Alex hit a home run over the center field fence at Keene’s Bambino Field, a drive of over 210 feet.
The field was built 10 years ago and people can recall only one other 9-year-old hitting it over the fence.
Alex is 4-foot-11 and weighs 116 pounds, hence, the moniker Baby Bull. He is not just big, but athletic — the type of kid who plays pitcher, shortstop, first base and center field.
He can take pitches the other way, hit line drives or try to launch a ball over an outfielder’s head. He does it all with an Easton Stealth SC888, a top-of-the-line aluminum bat that goes for over $200.
I took Alex back to the same field where he hit his home run to throw him batting practice, something I regularly did this spring since he played on the Junior League team — consisting of 9-, 10- and 11-year-olds — which I helped coach. I should add that even with the aluminum bats, the only player on the team who made me feel like I needed a net in front of me was Alex.
The catch this time was that he had to use two bats: his own aluminum bat and a wood Louisville Slugger that I had the kids occasionally use during batting practice.
The aluminum bat was 30 inches and 19 ounces; the wooden bat was 28 inches and 24 ounces.
Now this experiment was meant to test Darby’s contention that aluminum generates no more bat speed — or exit speed — than wood. And, in a sense, that is true.
But there always seems to be a “however” in these assertions and the “however” here is that the claim is based on the perfect big league swing using the best quality bat, hitting the ball right on the sweet spot.
In reality, that does not hold true at the youth level for several reasons.
Because the wooden bats are heavier, it is unlikely a pre-teen can generate the perfect swing. The odds get even greater when you consider that the sweet spot is smaller. And they grow even longer when you consider that the quality of wood a youth player would use is far inferior to the ones used in the big leagues.
There are no significant variables with aluminum.
This is the issue I put to the test during a couple of rounds of batting practice with Alex. The difference was startling. Not only did he hit the ball farther with aluminum, but hit it harder — and that’s where safety becomes an issue.
We did two rounds with each bat, stopping after he hit 10 balls into the field.
On the first round, he hit one ball over the fence, four to the fence and one to the warning track with his aluminum bat. His best drive with wood landed 20 feet short of the fence and it took a lot longer to hit 10 into the field, because he couldn’t get around as quick and fouled more balls off.
The results were similar on the second round.
Of the 20 balls he hit into the field with aluminum, 15 were hit on a line. With wood, he hit about five.
So, if wood and aluminum should theoretically mirror each other, why were the results so different? Things that make you go hmmm. Or make you rush out to the store and buy one of those Stealth bats.
Here’s the difference: The aluminum bat has a bigger sweet spot. The material is stronger and has more of a trampoline effect than wood, allowing the bat to be made longer but lighter, yet heavier at the handle. A batter can generate more speed through the hitting zone and still hit the ball hard even off the handle or the end of the barrel. You simply can’t do that with wood; it would break.
Watching Alex — and ducking a couple of his shots back through the box — made me think I would never want to pitch or play a corner infield position with him at the plate and that Stealth in his hands. And, how many Alex Parenteaus are there around the country?
My conversation with Jim Darby was thought provoking, but even Jim admitted that anything he said would be viewed as tainted. It’s true.
Darby said that scoring actually was down at this year’s College World Series, so the modifications the NCAA made to aluminum bats in 1999 are working. And that’s true. The average number of total runs scored in the 15 games at Omaha was 8.
However — again, there always is a however — it’s closer to the truth to say that good pitching will hold up against good hitting no matter what the batter is holding in his hands.
Here’s a better comparison: The teams at the CWS averaged seven runs a game during the regular season. The 13 teams in the Northeast-10, the only college conference that uses wood, averaged 4.7 runs per game.
Butch Hobson, the former Boston Red Sox who now manages the Nashua Pride, lets his sons take batting practice with his team on occasion. Hobson watched veteran slugger Glen Murray use one of the aluminum bats his sons had and said it was scary to see how hard he hit the ball. Ask him if there is a difference between wood and aluminum.
“I’d hate to be a pitcher and see Alex Rodriguez using an aluminum bat,” Hobson said.
It seems like composite bats — bats that are made of a mix of different materials, including wood — are the best solution because they don’t jump like aluminum, but can be more durable and less expensive.
Darby says composite bats can be just as potent at aluminum. Again that is true, however, composite bats can be made more similar to wood than aluminum.
Two current or former coaches who have had their players use composite bats say those bats last as long as aluminum and approximate the feel of wood. But then again, I guess at this point we should mention that Darby said Easton’s aluminum bats outsell their wood and composite bats by 10 to 1.
This isn’t meant to bash the manufacturers. They make bats to the specifications that organizations approve, so don’t look for them to change.
As more than one person said to me, it’s like asking the tobacco companies to make safer cigarettes.
Maybe, like Darby said, there are more injuries sliding or in the outfield, even by thrown balls, but those kinds of incidents leave players with broken bones and sprained ankles. A pitcher hit by a batted ball is in danger of being killed. We can control that, so why don’t we?
The colleges and high schools have tried to limit the exit speed of aluminum bats with some success — in high school, a bat can be no more than three inches longer than it weighs — and some have even gone to wood.
It’s at the lower levels, especially in Little League and Cal Ripken, where the true danger is because the pitchers and infielders are closer to the plate and the limitations on a bat’s specifications are so loose.
The Stealth that Alex used the other day is approved by five organizations, including Little League and Babe Ruth. Those groups think there’s not enough of a risk factor to change their specifications.
They need to see what I saw.
Sunday News staff writer Jim Fennell’s e-mail address is:
jfennell@theunionleader.com.
