Called Safe at the Plate

Squeamish observers might have thought Ryan Paul had gone batty in April when the Cal State Fullerton reliever stayed in a game against UC Riverside, as if nothing had happened, after a searing line drive grazed his head.

Looking back, Paul recalled being dazed but not confused. He said he immediately realized he “had to get over it right away. Otherwise it would be something that would just stick there.”

Not every pitcher has been as fortunate. A high school pitcher in Illinois recently was left in a coma for two weeks after a batted ball slammed into his head, and a college pitcher in the same state suffered a fractured skull last year.

Such injuries often trigger debate over whether a switch from aluminum to wood bats would make the game safer at the amateur level.

While several studies have shown that injuries attributed to aluminum bats are flat or even on the decline, there is a perception that aluminum bats pose a greater safety risk than their wood counterparts, prompting a handful of athletic sanctioning bodies to mandate change.

The Nassau Suffolk Catholic High School Athletic Assn., a seven-team league on New York’s Long Island, switched last season to wood bats, and every high school team in North Dakota will use wood next year after an incident three years ago in which an American Legion pitcher in Montana died after a line drive off an aluminum bat struck his head.

Though a handful of small college conferences have made similar substitutions in recent years, there was not an overwhelming show of support for wood bats among at least one major conference team.

In a survey of Fullerton players who competed in the College World Series, 13 preferred wood bats, nine preferred aluminum and three said they didn’t have a preference. There was a much stronger consensus among pitchers: six preferred wood, one preferred aluminum and one didn’t have a preference.

But even the pitchers who preferred wood acknowledged that aluminum gave the college game its own distinct flavor.

“I still like hearing the ping of an aluminum bat,” Titans ace Wes Roemer said. “It’s a little more dangerous than a wooden bat and you might get a few more cheap hits, but there’s nothing like hearing the sound of an aluminum bat in the College World Series.”

Several hitters said they liked the feel of an aluminum bat, with a sweet spot larger than its wood counterpart, making it easier to generate power.

“I’d swing aluminum as long as I could,” Fullerton left fielder Danny Dorn said. “It goes farther and it’s a little more forgiving than wood.”

Said first baseman Brett Pill: “If you get jammed with aluminum, you can still get a base hit.”

Yet, second baseman Justin Turner, who has used wood bats in the Cape Cod League, a summer league that attracts the nation’s top college players, said there was also an upside to using wood.

“It actually makes you a little bit better hitter,” Turner said. “It keeps your swing on the short side; you can’t muscle up or anything. I enjoyed swinging the wood last summer.”

Bat manufacturers such as Louisville Slugger, which supplies about 50 college teams, including Fullerton, with bats and other athletic gear, say they are in favor of allowing players to decide which type of bats they would like to use.

“Whatever the players and the governing bodies decide they want to use, we’ll be there to provide that equipment,” said Rick Redman, vice president of corporate communications for Louisville Slugger, which produces roughly an equal number of wood and aluminum bats each year.

Redman stressed that bat manufacturers have always made their bats to comply with safety standards set by various athletic governing bodies. The NCAA changed its standards in 1998 after USC defeated Louisiana State in a 35-run slugfest to win the College World Series, mandating that a ball couldn’t travel faster off an aluminum bat than it did off the finest wood bat.

The changes have resulted in a dramatic decrease in offense during the Division I college season -- from 1.06 home runs per team per game in 1998 to 0.70 per game in 2005. Batting averages are down too, from .306 in 1998 to .290 in 2005, according to the NCAA.

Injuries may also be on the decline. The NCAA commissioned a study of injuries in Division I baseball for four years beginning in 1998, specifically looking at pitchers, the most vulnerable to batted-ball injuries because of their proximity to home plate. The number of injuries declined from 214 in 1998 to 110 in 2001, with only 4.5% of those injured in 2001 missing their next start or game because of their injury.

“The studies showed that the vast majority of injuries were to lower extremities in terms of being hit by a batted ball,” said Ty Halpin, associate director of playing rules administration for the NCAA. “We haven’t seen anything in our data to suggest that there’s a safety issue” with aluminum bats.

Injury data from Little League Baseball and Softball showed a 76% decrease in reported injuries to pitchers from batted balls over an eight-year period beginning in 1992.

“I do think there’s accurate records of injury data, and the data will tell you it’s a safe sport,” said Jim Darby, vice president of promotions for Easton Sports, which manufactures aluminum and wood bats.

Darby blamed sensationalist media coverage for what he considered an unjust bias against aluminum bats, noting that earlier this week a Stanford pitcher had been struck in the face by a line drive off a wood bat while playing in the Cape Cod League. The pitcher will require surgery to repair fractures in his cheek and orbital bones.

Nonetheless, there remains a perception that aluminum bats are simply too dangerous. Earlier this month, the Miles City Mavericks, an American Legion team in Montana, forfeited two games because their opponent would not play with wood bats. The Mavericks have refused to play with aluminum bats since pitcher Brandon Patch died three years ago when a line drive off an aluminum bat struck his head.

For college coaches such as Fullerton’s George Horton, the issue may come down to economics. Louisville Slugger outfits the Titans with everything from top-of-the-line aluminum bats to equipment bags and provides Horton with a financial stipend.

“I think that we’re probably entrenched with aluminum bats,” Horton said. “Financially, for us, it would be a real blow to us to have to purchase wood bats with the amount of bats that you go through.”

Horton suggested that the only entity capable of enacting change at the college level would be Major League Baseball, whose scouts say it’s easier to assess players using wood bats.

“In their perfect world, everybody would be using wood and you’d be able to make more of an apples-to-apples comparison,” said Joe Garagiola Jr., senior vice president of baseball operations for Major League Baseball.

But major league officials are not pushing for change, Garagiola said, meaning that for the foreseeable future most college players will be able to swing wood bats only in summer leagues.

That’s OK with players such as Pill, the Fullerton first baseman who prefers aluminum and said the safety debate might amount to little more than a matter of common sense.

“If someone’s going to hit that hard of a line drive at a pitcher,” he said, “it’s going to hurt them anyway.”