Baseball at breaking point over maple bats - MLB - Yahoo! Sports

Links (11)

The Griddle: Maple bats: baseball's newest lethal weapon?
Published 5/9/2008 at Baseball Toaster
Are maple bats now the most likely piece of baseball equipment to injure players or spectators? Jeff Passan of Yahoo Sports looks into the issue of whether maple bats shatter into pieces that tend to fly into dugouts or the seats with the potential for gruesome injuries. Someone s going to die at a baseball stadium soon. Might be a player. Could be an umpire. Possibly even a fan. It almost was a coach. The scar on Don Long s left cheek still puffs around the edges, fresh enough that it looks like a misplaced zipper instead of the mark of someone who lived too hard. Like every scar, this one has a story, and it involves a piece of shattered wood, about two ...

Maple Bats
Published 5/9/2008 by noreply@blogger.com (Craig Calcaterra) at ShysterBall
Jeff Passan takes a look at the dangers posed by the shatteriffic nature of maple bats.

Baseball Today: Friday, May 9
Published 5/9/2008 by Art Martone (amartone@projo.com) at Projo Sox Blog
... DANGER ZONE: The sight of Placido Polanco's bat shattering as he looped the game-winning hit into left field Wednesday night is all-too-familiar these days; maple, which is becoming the wood of choice for many players, has a tendency to splinter. Yahoo.com's Jeff Passan notes that the flying shards are extremely dangerous -- Pirates coach Don Long was hit in the face with one a few weeks ago and suffered nerve damage -- and, comparing it to the foul ball that killed base coach Mike Coolbaugh last year, says "neither Major League Baseball nor the MLB Players ...

Could MLB Eventually Ban Maple Bats?
Published 5/9/2008 by Maury Brown at The Biz of Baseball
Ever since Barry Bonds started using them in 2001, the use of maple bats has been in the rise. Now, a baseball culture icon, Sam Holzman, of Sam Bats, gave Bonds one of the pricey maple bats which run from $65-$75 each, and when he did, it created a wave of players using them. Albert Pujols and Alfonso Soriano are but two others that use maple bats. But, while players say that they can hit balls further with maple bats, as opposed to the traditional ash bat variety, that claim does not seem to stand up to scientific rigor, and worse, maple bats break with more regularity, thus creating a serious danger to players, coaches, and fans. Jeff Passan ...

Not a moment too soon: TGIF reading
Published 5/9/2008 by Sarah Green at umpbump.com
... of any AL Team—yes, even more than the Rangers. I fail to see how signing Barry Bonds is going to change that. But I guess we have to have thirty different versions of the article, “Team X needs to sign Barry Bonds,” no matter how silly some of those are. Speaking of Bonds, he helped start this recent trend of using maple bats, which can be dangerous when they shatter (see photo). I’m an ash bat purist, so I was glad to see Jeff Passan’s article calling for the end of maple bats at Yahoo! Sports . (Hat tip to ...

Discarded Peanut Shells - The Games We Play
Published 5/9/2008 by misschatter at MissChatter : OnLine Reporter
Discarded Peanut Shells - The Games We Play Date May 9, 2008 Nice Girls Finish Last Didn’t mean to scare anyone - I just needed some time off to refine my direction here and revamp the site to fit in the advertising that’s going to make me millions (of fractions of pennies) and keep me swathed in fancy photo equipment! Honestly, I had been kicking around the idea of quitting for several months, but I just can’t pull the trigger. So rather than continue to put out belated old-news drivel that at least for me, was nothing to feel proud of (photographs, otoh, I’m quite proud of!), I decided to come up with an editorial plan, so to speak. I’m still working on it, ...

Maple Bats: One of Baseball's Most Dangerous Weapons
Published 5/10/2008 by Ying Yang Mafia at SportsFilter
Maple Bats: One of Baseball's Most Dangerous Weapons : About two or three times a game. players swinging bats made of maple wood end up with kindling in their hands while the barrel – blunt and thick on one end, splintered and sharp on the other – flies every which direction. "Someone’s going to die at a baseball stadium soon," writes Jeff Passan of Yahoo Sports. "Might be a player. Could be an umpire. Possibly even a fan. It almost was a coach." ...

‘Kudos & Wet Willies,’ Pitchers Edition
Published 5/12/2008 by Ed Valentine at Bugs & Cranks
It’s time for the weekly ‘Kudos & Wet Willies,’ praising the best performers of the week and heaping scorn on the worst. There are a lot of pitchers on the list this week Kudos to … Joe Torre: The former Yankee skipper is in LA and he is having fun again. Good for him. Oh by the way, he has the Dodgers playing very well. Darrell Rasner: The 27-year-old has won his first two starts with the Yankees, helping to stabilize the rotation. Aaron Small, anyone? The Florida Marlins: ...

Fernando's Musings From the Taqueria: Week Six
Published 5/13/2008 by Chaim Witz (noreply@blogger.com) at Thunder Matt's Saloon
Each week we will go around the league and recap all of the significant happenings, in an effort to keep you, the reader, abreast of such time sensitive news. And of course, by 'each week', I mean 'probably not each week'. La Semana Seis Wet Fart of the Week: Closers - Ah, the fickle life of a Major League closer. One day you're the toast of the town, surrounded by hookers, blow and freshly inked headlines singing your praises. The next day, you're Eric Gagne. The most overrated, volatile position in the game saw it's world come crashing down last week. Jason Isringhausen demotes ...

Maple Bats & Baseballs, Oh My…
Published 6/2/2008 by UtesFan89 at Playing For Pride
The post combines serious with some sarcasm. In no way am I trying to lessen the impact or injuries from what has happened. It’s just that if I stuck with the serious, my post would look like millions out there… except not as informative. Maple bats have been all over the news in regards to the MLB as of late. ...

Cal Ripken, Harold Reynolds Downplay The Scourge of The Maple Bat
Published 7 days ago by Eamonn Brennan at FanHouse
Filed under: MLB Media WatchSlowly, but surely, what started as slight concern about maple bats has grown into a full-grown issue. The furor is thus: maple bats splinter and spray far more than their ash counterparts, while the performance advantages that many players believe maple afford them are largely imaginary. (Baseball players are kooks like that.) Still, good luck convincing them. Consider Cal Ripken and Harold Reynolds -- not players, per se, but former ones -- as among the "no-big-deal" chorus: "I think they might be making a little bit too much out of it," Ripken said Tuesday. ...