April 3, 2007
Bloomberg Wants to Strike Out Metal Bat Ban
Mayor Bloomberg has veto fever! Last week, he vetoed a bill that would have limited the pedicab industry, and yesterday he said he would veto a bill banning metal bats from high schools. The Mayor said, "I don’t know whether aluminum bats are more dangerous or less dangerous...I have had friends who are professional baseball players call me and argue both ways, but I don’t think it’s the city’s business to regulate that." Ha! What is the Mayor talking about? The city loves to regulate stuff (transfats! the noise a Mr. Softee truck makes! smoking!).
City Councilman James Oddo of Staten Island who sponsored the bill said he wasn't surprised by the mayor's words. "I had a conversation with him last week and he told me that he was going to veto. By deferring to the leagues and the organizations, we ensure the status quo, and I think we've demonstrated over the course of three hearings and nearly 20 hours of testimony that the status quo creates an unreasonable and unacceptable risk to our student athletes."
While the bill says that there are safety concerns (metal bats supposedly hit balls faster and there have been some high-profile incidents of players being injured), some don't like metal bats for other reasons. In Virginia newspaper Daily News Record, one coach thinks that metal bats make even average players "threats" while a UNC professor studying batted-ball injuries says, "I think the one thing we all agree on is of all injuries that happen at the ballpark, we’re talking about a narrow slice of them that we could prevent – if we could prevent any of them – by moving back to wood."
The City Council passed the original bill 40-6, which makes it likely the Council will be able to override the Mayor's veto.
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The most entertaining thing about that post is Mo Vaughn in the background of the picture.
Cigarettes? BAN 'EM!
Trans fats? BAN 'EM!
Bike messengers? HELMETS OR JAIL!
Metal bats?...
... hey, it's not the government's place to be banning things like this.
Don't get me wrong, I'm glad Mayor Bling stopped channeling his inner nun, but he sure picked an odd time to start being libertarian.
I agree with Tim. This really does send the wrong message. Bloomberg has made a pattern for himself of stepping beyond what most people would consider normal for government. Why back off now?
(although I do agree with the helmet law. People who are too stupid not to wear one shouldn't be on bikes anyway)
Ha ha - Mo Vaughn! Aren't we glad we'll still be paying his salary until 2027?
I didn't know wood bats are that expensive.
Instead of the bat ban, how bout developing a safer baseball?
We should encourage bike messengers to forgo helmets. Helmets don't make messengers any less of a hazard to pedestrians, and the more messengers who suffer head trauma, the better.
Short of making the balls of the wiffled variety, how do they make them safer? It's a hardball game. If you want safer balls (I'm fully aware of the potential for jokes here, but I'm fighting it), play softball.
I read Baseball Prospectus regularly (I know, I'm a dork), and they've been railing against aluminum bats for a long, long time. The simple fact is that the ball returns off the face of the bat much faster than it does off of a wooden bat.
Sometimes, it's not a question of hard dollar cost, but physical cost.
Of course none of this means that local government should be regulating it... The leagues and athletic associations should be changing their rules, and supplying equipment if need be.
Clearly the only thing that will truly keep the children safe from harm is if parents everywhere start following my SuperMax Method of Parenting. This involves locking your child in his or her room (I recommend 8'x6'-sized bedrooms) until they are 18. They'll be completely protected from child molesting predators, drunk drivers, foolish decisions, and all the other dangers kids in the general population have to face. You can prevent them from eating dangerous foods that contain trans-fats, or whatever is inevitably deemed dangerous down the line. And they can forget about smoking!
Won't they be stricken with childhood obesity locked in their rooms all day? Good question! That's why it's necessary to give them three hour-long periods in your yard per week. Athletic equipment is dangerous (hello! metal bats? speeding balls?) so I advise against it. Also, too large an area allows them to get a good running head of steam going and they could fall and skin their knee. The ideal yard would be a relatively small featureless space consisting of concrete and chain link fencing, so they don't go off wandering and get lost, or more likely abducted.
It's true that when your child gets to those difficult teenage years, you'll experience some "resistance" to the SuperMax Method, normally in the form of your child trying to stab you in the eye with a shiv fashioned from his or her toothbrush. This is completely normal. A simple time-out period consisting of confinement in a solitary place like a dark closet for 15-30 days is generally adequate as punishment.
Believe me Moms and Dads, when you finally let your child or children out of the house at the end of those 18 years, the look of gratitude on their faces be evidence of a parenting job well done. Your completely safe and protected child will be ready to venture out into the real world and conquer it head on!*
*Minimum probationary period of 5 years after he or she leaves the nest does apply.
The problem isn't just that the bats are made from aluminum, it's how they are engineered. Much like oversized tennis rackets and perimeter weighted golf clubs, aluminums bats can be designed for whatever size "sweet spot" you want.
One argument in tennis is that the players aren't necessarily hitting the ball harder than their wooden rackets era counterparts because the players are stronger or because the newer rackets return more energy to the ball but because the players don't need to be as accurate with where the ball hits the racket face. The sweet spot on the oversized rackets is enormous compared to a wood racket.
That's probably largely true re: the sweet spot.
However, I am fairly confident that some of the changes in tennis ball speed are coming from the better conditioning of athletes. Compare John McEnroe (feisty and with certain endurance but pretty scrawny in his heyday) with someone like Federer or Sampras. On the women's side the differences are even more pronounced (Navratilova aside).
Actually, if you smoke grounded-up aluminum bats, it's worse than cigarettes. And if you eat aluminum bats, it's worse for you than trans fats.
C'mon Bloomberg, get with the program.
Hold up ? Is that Mo Vaughn in the backround ? You all need to pay attention to what the hell you post .
Aluminum bats aren't really as dangerous as they are made out to be. All of the major manufacturers make bats that are essentially the equivalent of wooden bats.
Wood bats cost a lot of money and break frequently. A HS team can get away with having about five metal bats and using those same bats for several years. The additional cost of buying wood bats at $75-$150 a pop could end up killing baseball in some schools. That would be a shame.
Also bike messengers don't make much money and most are uninsured. Thus when they get head trauma it costs the rest of us the tax payers to pay for their expensive brain surgeries. It makes perfect sense to force them to wear helmets.
So many people come on here and post what I'm sure they think are snarky, clever and/or funny comments. But try to think a little bit first.
I just caught another glance at that photo - Bloomy throws like a girl. With cerebral palsy.
Note: Bloomy is a girl !!!!