‘Safety’ Ball Strikes Out in Laguna Niguel : Sports: A Little League chapter’s refusal to use the ball has caused a heated debate among parents.

In this city and hundreds like it across America, baseball is the subject at hand. Not the hairy dispute between major-league owners and players. Not the series on public television.

Here, when they talk about baseball, they’re talking about the ball.

In this affluent community of gated homes and rolling hills, the conflict has escalated to the point where a group of about 80 parents is outraged over the refusal of a neighborhood Little League chapter to allow the use of a so-called “safety” ball that they say reduces the chance of injury.

To the naked eye, the safety ball is identical to the traditional hardball. Its stitching and size--even its smell--are the same. But what’s inside the balls makes them dramatically different, and therein lies the conflict.

The core of the safety ball is a substance made of polyurethane foam, as opposed to the natural wool yarn or coarse synthetic fiber found in hardballs. Its softer core gives the ball a light, almost delicate feel.

What purists object to, more than any one trait, is the sound of the safety ball: A hollow thud, as opposed to the resonant “whack!” of a hardball on glove or bat--which in their minds symbolizes the game itself.

A recent study by Michigan State University, however, revealed 73% fewer injuries among teams using the safety ball, and it’s that information that has incited controversy here and in other cities.

Officials for Little League Inc. counter by saying that although injuries--even deaths--have occurred on its playing fields, its safety record in 56 years is remarkably good and thus fails to warrant favoring one ball over another.

So, the Rancho Niguel Little League, in which 460 children from the ages of 5 to 12 participate, voted in March to curtail the use of the “reduced injury factor,” or RIF, ball, saying it would violate baseball tradition to abandon the hardball.

But instead of putting the matter to rest, the vote seems to have been a rallying cry.

“I was told that if we proceeded to tournament play and were playing teams from Mission Viejo, and we were using the RIF ball and they weren’t, we’d probably lose because they would be ‘tougher,’ ” said Felicia Breshears, whose son plays in the league. “So, toughness--and beating Mission Viejo--that’s really what matters here. That was the message.”

The message also involved the ball, which in cities across the country has engendered far more controversy in youth baseball than batting helmets, breakaway bases or aluminum bats ever did.

“The ball has been the stronghold of the game,” said Erik Peterson, a former minor league player whose son is a member of the Rancho Niguel league and who sells safety balls for a living. “It’s the focal point, the one thing they tend to see as sacred.”

Nevertheless, safety balls and breakaway bases--which seek to protect ligaments and limbs--appear to be catching on. State legislatures in New York, Georgia, Texas, Michigan and Tennessee recently passed resolutions urging children’s baseball organizations to adopt stronger safety measures.

And five cities--Ann Arbor, Mich.; Toledo, Ohio; Rockville, Md.; Tallahassee, Fla.; and Roanoke, Va.--recently mandated the use of youth safety baseballs and softballs in affiliated league play.

In 1991, the National Summit for Safety in Youth Baseball and Softball--a symposium endorsed by then-President Bush--advocated the use of softer balls as “a minimum requirement . . . for reducing the incidence and severity of head injuries and soft tissue injuries in youth baseball and softball.”

Armed with such findings, the group of parents presented a petition to the Rancho Niguel board at a meeting April 26. But the board rejected the petition and threatened to dismiss any coaches who, on their own, substitute the RIF ball during game competition.

In March, the board had agreed to a slight compromise. It voted to continue using the RIF ball in its 5- and 6-year-old division--commonly known as T-ball--and in its coach-pitch (6-to-7-year-old) division.

In what was seen as a gesture of conciliation, it also agreed for the first time to allow the ball in the first five games of its machine-pitch (7-to-8-year-old) division, which has a 10-game season.

But when asked to endorse using the safety ball in the final five games of machine-pitch--and in the league as a whole--the board vehemently objected.

“What are we doing, raising a bunch of wimps here?” Commissioner Claudia Shea reportedly asked the parents in defending the hardball.

Shea declined to be interviewed, referring all questions to Greg Akers, a dentist and the league’s safety officer.

“We’re parents too,” Akers said of the board. “Safety is first and foremost, and it always has been. It’s just real sad that the fun seems to be disappearing because of these parents and the conflict they’re creating.”

But the protesters, who include a pediatrician, an attorney and Chuck Long, a former National Football League quarterback who says he isn’t a wimp, accused the board of not being as sensitive to safety as it should be.

After hearing the parents’ presentation, Akers said he telephoned the headquarters of Little League Inc., in Williamsport, Pa., and that officials there recommended Rancho Niguel continue using the traditional hardball.

He said the person he spoke to cited a study by the Institute for Preventive Sports Medicine of Ann Arbor, Mich., that contradicts at least three studies endorsed by Worth Inc., the Tullahoma, Tenn., firm that manufactures the RIF ball.

But when contacted for an interview, Dennis Sullivan, the spokesman for Little League, said that, as a matter of policy, the organization seeks to avoid controversies that ought to be settled locally.

He said the RIF ball is used on every level of Little League play, but that whether it’s used is left entirely to local officials.

Little League uses more than 100 baseballs made by 19 manufacturers--one of which, Sullivan said, is Worth Inc. “Little League does not manufacture or recommend one ball over another,” he added. “We do not make a ball.”

In fact, over the years, Little League has used 10 models of baseballs made by Worth Inc., and 10 made by the Rawlings Sporting Goods Co.--its two most popular manufacturers, Sullivan said. The cost of the RIF ball versus the traditional hardball is basically the same: Both retail between $4 and $5. An official major league baseball manufactured by Rawlings sells for about $10.

Jess Heald, chairman of the board of Worth, said the company stopped making its traditional hardballs in 1990--”a decision born entirely by safety . . . by the fact that children were getting hurt”--and now makes only the RIF ball, which it introduced in 1985.

Heald equates the growing debate to the early controversy surrounding seat belts, air bags and even secondhand smoke. “You can’t take away all auto-related deaths by using seat belts and air bags, but you can reduce their number,” he said.

According to the U.S. Consumer Product Safety Commission, the number of baseball-related deaths--whether they occur in youth leagues or on the nation’s sandlots--is rising:

* Two-hundred-fifty baseball-related deaths to people of all ages have been reported to the agency since 1973, representing an average of 10 to 12 a year.

* Children ages 5 to 14 were the victims in about one-third (86) of the 250 reported deaths.

* Sixty-one deaths resulted in cases where children were struck by baseballs or softballs, usually in the chest or head.

* Thirty-five deaths have resulted in cases involving children ages 5 to 14 in which the ball struck the victim in the chest.

* 426,000 baseball-playing injuries occurred to children in all age groups in 1993 alone, with 164,800 (37%) affecting children ages 5 to 14.

The safety commission, an independent federal regulatory agency that reports to Congress, gathers its statistics from hospital emergency rooms, so not all injuries are reported.

But as Little League, Inc. points out, many of the deaths and injuries reported occur in youth leagues other than Little League or in unorganized “pickup” games on sandlots and street corners.

“Such statistics are not reflective of Little League baseball,” Sullivan, its spokesman, said, noting that the figures reflect every fatal injury in which baseball played a role, regardless of the circumstances.

“We’ve had children struck by lightning and killed during Little League games,” he said. “Does that mean the ball was too hard?”

He noted that, among the 2.9 million children who play Little League baseball on 193,000 teams in 91 countries, the number of injuries is “infinitesimal” and that it remains “one of the safest sports in the world.”

Little League has been insured for 30 of its 56 years, and in that time, “there have been only three instances in which a batter died from the impact of a pitched ball,” Sullivan said. “Most injuries or deaths occur when a player is struck in the field.”

However, Sullivan said he had “no idea” how many Little Leaguers have been fatally injured under those circumstances.

In the end, the traditional hardball “meets our minimum safety requirements, and beyond that,” he said, “it’s a local argument we don’t care to enter.”

But Heald, whose company stands to profit from mass acceptance of the RIF ball, argues that most of the balls used in Little League are outdated. Most are several degrees harder than either the RIF ball or even the official major league ball.

The core of major league balls is made of natural wool yarn, but many of the balls used in Little League have at their core a synthetic fiber that is cheaper and harder than wool yarn--a claim Sullivan does not dispute.

Based on studies his company has funded, Heald said the major league ball can carry a lethal blow at 45 m.p.h.; the synthetic yarn ball, at 40 m.p.h.; and the RIF ball at 80 m.p.h.

The RIF ball comes in three degrees of firmness: RIF 1, the softest, is used primarily in T-ball; RIF 5, slightly firmer than the RIF 1 but noticeably softer than the hardball, is used primarily among 8- to 10-year-olds; and RIF 10, which is only slightly softer than a hardball, is used among children 10 and older.

But in Laguna Niguel, and in Sunnyvale, in the Silicon Valley of the San Francisco Bay Area, the RIF ball is being met with resistance.

“The situation in those places typifies the tradition-bound resistance that we encounter all the time,” Heald said. “League officials tend to feel that if you’re hit or hurt a little bit, it’s part of the game and you ought to accept it.”

Akers, the safety officer for Rancho Niguel, disagreed, saying machismo and tradition had nothing to do with the league’s position. Rather, he said, it was the combination of conflicting studies and the position of Little League Inc. that swayed the vote.

The study by Dr. David H. Janda of the Institute for Preventive Sports Medicine indicated the RIF ball was no safer than the traditional hardball and might be more dangerous. Using crash-test dummies supplied by the General Motors Corp., researchers found that the RIF ball maintains contact with the body longer and thus poses a greater chance of injury.

But an Orange County researcher disagrees, contending that despite Janda’s findings, the 1991 symposium--in which Janda participated--overwhelmingly endorsed the softer ball.

“I guess I’d rather be hit with a balloon than a rock,” said Stephan Walk, an assistant professor of kinesiology and health promotion at Cal State Fullerton, who participated in the Michigan State study, which involved videotaping 176 Little League games in Lansing, Mich., in 1991.

Researchers recorded 405 instances of a child being hit by a baseball. Comparing children hit by the hardball with those hit by a RIF ball, the study found that players were nearly three times more likely to suffer “major” or “extreme discomfort” when struck by the hardball ball. Of the 29 players involved in major or extreme discomfort impacts, 21 were hit with the hardball.

In essence, Walk said, the RIF ball compresses over a larger area and for a longer time to reduce the severity of impact.

“It’s like the difference between hitting an air bag or hitting a dashboard,” Walk said. “In the end, it’s just common sense, is it not? These are children, not grown men. So they use a softer ball. Will that really hurt anything? Will it really hurt the game?”

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Inside Baseballs

Both the standard Little League baseball and the “safety” ball weigh five ounces and are nine inches in circumference. The difference is in the core: The standard ball’s synthetic-fiber center produces velocity off the bat, fast hops afield and gnarly bruises; the safety version’s polyurethane-foam core absorbs impact.

Polyurethane-foam core

Rubber and cork blend shell Wool yarn

Wool yarn

Synthetic cover

***

Who’s Hurt First?

Injuries to players by position, 1991 to 1993:

Position Percentage Total Runner 27.7% 4,182 Batter 18.4% 2,772 Outfield 14.2% 2,138 Catcher 12.7% 1,912 Pitcher 7.2% 1,084 2nd 6.0% 905 3rd 5.8% 890 1st 5.5% 836 Shortstop 2.5% 379 Total 100.0% 15,098

***

Where It Hurts

Top five injuries to all Little League ballplayers in the first six months of 1994:

Head, face: 35.4% Hand, fingers: 16.8% Ankle: 11.8% Wrist: 5.7% Elbow, lower arm: 5.3% ***

For both organized and informal baseball and softball leagues nationwide, since 1973:

* Children accounted for 86 of the 250 baseball-related deaths

* 72% of the children killed were struck in the head or chest by the ball

Source: Consumer Product Safety Commission, National Little League Assn., Franklin Sporting Goods

Researched by APRIL JACKSON / Los Angeles Times