Hard Times : ‘Safety Ball’ Debate Divides Little League Officials and 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, a group of parents is outraged over the refusal of a neighborhood Little League chapter to allow 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 the core 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.

Safety-ball advocates say it performs no differently than a hardball. It travels no farther or faster. It only feels different when landing in a glove--or striking a person’s body.

Purists, however, see it another way.

“What are we doing, raising a bunch of wimps here?” one commissioner of the local Rancho Niguel Little League reportedly asked the parents demanding use of the softer ball.

So the two sides find themselves debating the significance of studies such as a recent one by Michigan State University, which concluded that there were 73% fewer injuries among teams using the safety ball.

Officials of Little League Inc. counter by saying that although injuries--even deaths--have occurred on its playing fields, the 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 ages 5 to 12 participate, voted in March to curtail use of the RIF (reduced injury factor) ball because 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.

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 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 division for ages 6 and 7.

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 division (ages 7 and 8), 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.

It was Commissioner Claudia Shea who reportedly wondered whether the community was “raising a bunch of wimps.” But 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 that Rancho Niguel continue using the traditional hardball. The person he spoke with, he said, 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 that the RIF ball is used on every level of Little League--and that its use is left entirely to local officials.

Little Leagues nationwide use 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 noted.

In fact, over the years, Little League has used 10 models of baseballs made by Worth and 10 made by the Rawlings Sporting Goods Co.--its two most popular manufacturers. The costs of the RIF ball and the traditional hardball are basically the same--both retail between $3 and $5. An official major league baseball manufactured by Rawlings sells for about $10.

All of the balls mentioned--including the RIF--weigh the same: 5 ounces.

About 7 million balls per year are manufactured for youth-league play and represent $20 million a year in business, according to industry executives.

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.

According to the U.S. Consumer Product Safety Commission, children between 5 and 14 were the victims in about one-third of the 254 baseball-related deaths reported since 1973. Sixty-one of the deaths came in cases in which children were struck by baseballs or softballs, usually in the chest or head.

The safety commission gathered 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.

Among the 2.9 million children who play Little League baseball on 193,000 teams in 91 countries, he noted, 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.” Sullivan said he had “no idea” how many Little Leaguers have been fatally injured under those circumstances.

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, he says.

The core of major league balls is made of natural wool yarn, but many of the balls used in Little League have a synthetic fiber core 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, the game for beginning players; RIF 5, slightly firmer but still 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.

“The situation (in Laguna Niguel) 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.”

But Akers, the safety officer for Rancho Niguel, said 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.

For some of the parents, that doesn’t seem good enough. “All we ever cared about,” said Elene Wood, whose son plays in the league, “was making sure our children were safe.”