Banning metal bats?

I kind of have to agree with Stupid here...
Most high school kids are swinging the $320 bats. The Little Leaguers are using the $250 models. :

 

No, the Little Leaguers are using the $50-75 models from WalMart.

 

Stupid, that's what WE may have gotten when we were kids.

Are you around the parent-child dynamic much these days?

 

A lot, shotglass. And yourself?

You must live in quite an exclusive area because hardly any of the Little Leaguers in my town (and I've actually covered them at times) don't use $300 bats.

 

Also, we used wood bats when I was a kid. At least until I was 14. And the aluminum ones didn't cost $50 back then.

 

Yes, and my retired colleague bought his house for $6,000 in 1959.

Actually, a lot of the LL teams I see around here are affluent suburban areas. I doubt a city LL team would be swinging the high-performance metal. But I don't think any aluminum that is usable is cheap.

(Why was I making this point again?)

 

Well, I'm not quite that old. I was playing LL in the mid 70s. I guess it comes down to where you live but as long as WalMart is selling aluminum bats for $50-75 (and they are), my guess is that most LLers are using those instead of the $300 ones.

 

i think you two are talking about two different groups of kids. There are the kids just playing for fun, who have the cheap Wal-Mart bat. But those that take it seriously, have no problems asking mom or pop for a $350 bat for Christmas. And let's face it, that's the one gift parents know the kid will use over and over again.

 

College baseball as a pipeline to pro ball is a fairly recent phenomenon. Used to be, a huge percentage of players turned pro directly out of high school, which is why the minor league system for baseball is so much more ingrained than for any other U.S. sport.

 

I've been done with Little League for a few years how -- did I mention my "youngest" starts college Monday, as a complete aside? -- and the VAST majority of bats used in his leagues were the expensive kind. They probably weren't $320, but they were way up there.

The upside, as mentioned multiple times, is they'd usually get you through an entire season.

But one of the scariest sports injuries I've seen at any level came off a metal bat in Juniors (13-14). Line drive off the pitcher's knee; he was down for a long, long time, ambulance, the whole thing.

It was an out of town game, and oddly, I never did hear how he wound up.

 

I saw a 14-year-old pitcher lose an eye five years ago. Needless to say, one of the saddest experiences I've ever seen around sports.

 

Something that seems to be missing from this thread (or I just may have missed it). College coaches are watching a lot of these high schoolers. Whether it's in Legion ball, or, as in the case of my daughter, ASA gold travel ball. They want to see "pop" off the bat. It's one of the things they look for when evaluating a kid. They can't define it, but they say they know it when they see it. If that's what they are looking for, and my daughter is working as hard on the other parts of her game, then I am going to give her the bat that provideds the best pop. I paid 259 dollars for this years bat. My kid is a pitcher and 1st baseman, so I can see this from both sides. She is 43 feet from the batter when she pitches (sometimes closer when she plays first) and has handled, or been hit by, some very hard shots (and my stomach acid doubles every time). She considers it part of the breaks of the game. I don't mean to belittle those who have been injured, but she sees it as a necessary evil for the game she plays. When she was 7, she broke her arm playing soccer when another kid jumped high to kick a ball and missed. That doesn't mean soccer should be changed.


Having said all that, there are bats that ASA will not sanction, and I see umpires remove them from play every weekend. I do not know if the older boys travel teams have similar bat restrictions, but maybe they should.

If Little League goes back to wood bats and does not subsidize some leagues, many leagues will fold. There just wont be enough money in the budget for wood bats for all the teams in the league. And I speak as someone who has filled every role in a league over the years, from president to annoying dad. The money just isn't there in a lot of leagues.