Controversy Between Metal And Wood Bats

The Controversy Whether College Baseball Players

Should Use Metal or Wooden Bats?

` In college baseball today the players are becoming so strong because of the weight lifting plans, constant conditioning, and the use of drugs to enhance their performance. The baseballs are being wound tighter and the quality of pitching has declined over the years. It is becoming a major concern for college players because they hit the ball so hard with metal bats. It is just a matter of time until someone gets hit and either seriously injures or even kills them if it hits them in the wrong place.

It is getting too dangerous for players today to be using metal bats. The most dangerous position for players is pitcher because they are the closest to the batter at sixty feet six inches away from home plate. Balls hit up the middle of the field off metal bats give pitchers an average reaction time of 0.056 seconds less than that of balls hit with wood bats. This could be a difference of life and death (Shively 1). This is very little time to get out of the way of a ball. In my recent experience, we were playing Tennessee Westland and our lead-off man Chris Rankhorn hit a line drive back up the middle hitting the pitcher in the head. The blow caused him to be immediately rushed to the hospital. The pitcher received stitches and won't see any action on the field for a while. An NCAA survey showed that 375 injuries from balls hit up the middle occurred over the course of the 1998 college baseball season. Thirty-four of those pitchers exited the game and six received serious injuries that put them out of action for months. In that same year, a 14-year-old in Arizona was hit in the temple and killed by a ball off an aluminum bat (Shively 1). Pitchers are not the only players on the field that are in danger, a sharp line drive down the line or a short hop to a player could have serious consequences.

Wooden bats are safer than metal bats. Major league baseball conducted the same study that college baseball did about the use of metal or wood bats on the same amount of games in 1998 and found that only 316 similar injuries occurred in a league that only uses wood bats and has far more powerful hitters (Shively 1). This stat proves that the use of wooden bats prevents injuries.

Wooden bats can also prepare a college athlete for the next level. In my experience of using a wooden bat balls I hit were not hit near as hard, not hit as far, and if you did not hit the ball square the player would know it. If you do not hit the ball on the barrel of the bat with a wooden bat it stings your hands and may break the bat training the player to hit the ball on the barrel of the bat. If I hit a ball out of the ball park by ten or twenty feet with a