Banning metal bats?

metal bats will never be banned nationwide. a team can get through an entire season with a couple of metal bats. buying a couple cases of wooden bats is no big deal to well off suburban school districts or legion teams or to most colleges, but it will be a huge blow to organized baseball. it'll be one more reason for talented young inner city kids to play basketball or football instead of baseball.

what they need is better technology. surely someone at the bat companies can make a less lethal metal bat.

 

I'd imagine the top teams would likely get sponsors for their bats, but what about the smaller D-I and below schools?

 

so technically the difference might be negligible for the well off suburban school team that currently has 10 top of the line metal bats, but it's still a cost problem. cheap metal bats are still cheap metal bats. the inner city schools aren't buying those $300 bats.

 

hogwash. that technology has been around since the first metal bat was made. that technology, however, is a relic consumers don't want anymore.

Easton and their competitors (not to mention the consumers) want balls to go farther. The only way to do that is to make them go faster off the bat. Just like golf clubs.

 

And I'm sure the NJ legislature will also do something to help the school districts who are going to either have shell out considerably more money in equipment costs or be forced to drop baseball because they can't afford it. Riiiiiight.

 

I'm not worried about whether they will or not. The issue is one of safety.

As we all could summize, if there was some loophole that allowed the poorer districts to use the metal bats and some kid got hurt, shouts would rain down about the loophole.

 

The trampoline effect was legislated out of aluminum bats in college ball by the NCAA back in the 90s. There's no reason high school federations can't do the same thing. Bat manufacturers want to stay in business. They'll adjust.

 

Thank you, Armchair, thought for a second no one else had thought of that or was going to bring that up.

Also, the NCAA (and most leagues that use aluminum bats) regulate a difference between the length of the bat and its weight. That also makes a big difference in bat speed, velocity off the bat, etc.

Aluminum bats are fine as long as they're regulated and it's enforced.

 

The NFHS instituted the same bat rules as the NCAA a few years back, and bat manufacturers had to adjust and start putting out legal bats.

In Indiana, runs per game in the state tournament when the new bat rule went into effect dropped by about 1 or 1.5.

 

And I watched a high school County toutnament final a few weeks ago where every other hit was like a cannon shot. A left-fielder nearly got decapitated by a line drive than was on him in no time ... I'm talking LEFT FIELD, more than 300 feet away from the hitter and the kid barely had time to get the glove up in front of his face to keep from being killed.

 

Sounds like somebody's using an illegal bat.

 

Sounds like the f'ing bats are unsafe at any speed rating.
I guess an entire team was using illegal bats, huh, AQB.