After 12 hours of deliberation, a jury sided with the parents of former Miles City American Legion baseball pitcher Brandon Patch in a civil suit over the player’s death during a 2003 game in Helena.
Aluminum bat maker Hillerich & Bradsby Co. failed to provide adequate warning as to the dangers of the bat used by a Helena Senators player during the game, at least eight of the 12 Lewis and Clark County jurors agreed Wednesday.
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Attorneys for Hillerich & Bradsby Co. argued any other bat would not have hit the ball differently; in fact, they said, most bats on the market at the time would have struck the ball harder. Patch’s death was a tragic accident, they said. The defense lawyers declined comment after the verdict was read.
Baseballs hit with aluminum bats, such as the one used in that American Legion game, only give pitchers milliseconds to respond in a defensive stance, the plaintiffs said. Plaintiff’s attorney Joe White said the average time needed by a pitcher to defend a batted ball is 400 milliseconds. Patch had 378 milliseconds to respond, he said.
Eyewitnesses called by the plaintiffs said they could not see the ball between the time it left the bat and when it ricocheted off Patch’s head. Patch collapsed on the mound. He died as a result of his injuries about four hours later.
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1. Run Joe Run Posted: October 29, 2009 at 04:46 PM (#3370299)"The ball was too hard and bouncy!"
I'm curious as to how they determined with such precision the time that Patch had to respond, and how they determined the average time needed to defend a batted ball - from what I know, most home recording equipment doesn't have anywhere near a high enough frame rate to distinguish something to the millisecond level. It'd also be nice if they clarified what they meant by defend - is it get a glove in the way, or is it just the time needed to duck the ball?
From TFA: "We just want to save someone else's life" (adding, she hopes other players and parents will get adequate warnings about the dangers of aluminum bats.)
So the only options are to not play baseball, or ban aluminum bats. The existence and enhanced prominence of the risks of playing with aluminum bats cannot save a single life of a baseball player.
I think this is somewhat of a red herring, the exact measurements. As noted, it sounds like H&B;argued that whatever the timing was, it was less than it would have been for most others, and yet they were still found negligent. But regardless, it looks like there are plentifully available HD camcorder options that can do 720p at 60 frames per second. That would allow you to get within 16.67 milliseconds.
Bike Helmets! Y I nver where a bike helmit when I waz in skool + look at me Im find know prblems hear.
If I ever had a kid I have no real idea on how forceful I would be on the bike helmet. I guess it would depend on the misses, well, obviously it always depends on the mom, but personally it wouldn't be that big of a deal.
So how long is this warning going to be, and how do you get it to fit on a baseball bat?
DB
No, it still seems overzealous. (The phrase I would choose has several more expletives in it, but I'll use yours for now.)
My old Civ-Pro Prof. used to mock Torts, he used to say you could teach it in four words "Duty, Breach, Causation, Damages."
I used to agree with that, I guess only one word is needed now, Damages.
Wow, that's awesome that she was wearing it then.
Mark me down as being 100% fine with bike helmets as well. Especially when they're still learning to ride.
My youngest son played his first season of baseball last year in an 8-and-under league (he was almost 7 at the time). Toward the end of the season, they replaced the pitching machine with kids pitching. Turns out, he's got a pretty good arm and was tabbed to start the first tournament game they played. The opponents had this monster of a kid, the kind that makes you want to see a birth certificate because it's hard to believe he's only 8. He rocketed a pitch right back up the box. I asked my son how close it came to him and he admitted he never saw it. Honestly, it's got me worried about him continuing pitching, particularly with the distance between home and the mound at the level he's currently playing.
Changing the bats or balls seems like the simplest thing -- as suggested above, that's what they do in slow-pitch softball, and though it doesn't fix everything, it helps a lot. I don't want to see kids having to wear helmets on the field.
The last thing we need is an entire generation of Oleruds. The concepts of base stealing and triples will vanish from the game.
I haven't been paying attention for quite awhile now, but isn't it pretty much, y'know, understood that you're batshit insane on such topics? (Not saying I'm not, mind ...) The exec editor in Little Rock styles himself as a libertarian as well, & of course he's bug-eatingly crazy. A fellow city desk editor there & I decided years ago that the guy's 6-foot-tall invisible rabbit friend calls all the shots.
The sick thing about this, of course, is that aluminum bats only exist as a Little League-ish institution because parents want to watch kids roughly replicating what adults can do at the plate, albeit on a miniature scale: home runs, long fly balls, doubles, etc. They don't want to see a bunch of squibbly grounders and humpback singles that you'd get with a heavier wooden bat -- it's boring! It's lame! (So goes the argument, I mean.) Thus the mainstreaming of aluminum bats -- which don't really do young players any favors developmentally either, I might add. But if so, then a few fatalities and brain injuries is the price adults have to be willing to pay if they want to force their youngest kids into playing an acceptable facsimile of the official game. Or else they're going to start having to put up screens, go to wooden bats, etc. I doubt the ball would ever be deadened.
I'm all for child helmet laws. Mostly because kids are crazy and think they're immortal. Adults should be able to do what they like. Even though they're also crazy and stupid.
Why would you put this warning on the bat? The pitcher and fielders don't have the bat and the bat poses little risk to the batter. The warning should go on the ball: "WARNING: Do not throw this toward the strike zone of a batter holding an aluminum bat."
If the USGA can put a limit on drivers, than various baseball organizations ought to be able to put a limit on aluminum bats. I don't want to see them banned because I assume there are cost issues involved. Aluminum bats last a hell of a lot longer than most wooden bats (though perhaps at lower levels, pitchers don't break bats as easily).
Yes, it was primarily a cost issue why aluminum replaced wood. And it should be understood that when the bats were first introduced, they were actually aluminum, dented easily and while there was a bit of a spring effect, it wasn't nearly as pronounced as you find with the composite material models of today. It wasn't (at least in my leagues) until the Easton Company really started engineering their bats that the bats became more frightening compared to wood and older aluminum models.
Yep, that was the reason. Some folks used to argue for "safety" as well, but kids are incredibly unlikely to break a bat such that it explodes. Given how rarely I think most of the younger kids would break bats, I have a hard time believing it would cost that much more (if at all) than a fancy $300 aluminum/scandium/whatever-ium bat!
Regarding the whole "hitting for power" bit...I think it leads to frequent mis-assessment of some of these kids. My son did was in Pinto (7-8 y.o.) this year and all I can tell you is that our All-Star team was filled with big kids who could swing a big barrel bat and sometimes even make contact, resulting in line drives (i.e., extra base hits), but not terribly good batting averages. Meanwhile, two of the best "hitters" (i.e., kids who swing the bat and make solid contact on a regular basis) in the league were 6-year-olds who couldn't swing big, heavy-barreled bats and were considered "weak" All-Stars because they didn't drive the ball as far. Give all the kids wooden bats and these two probably would have been about #4 and #5 in our league, instead of being viewed by the All-Star team coaches as "unfortunate" selections for the All-Star teams (one made A, one B).
Great point. When I was in Mustang, it was obvious that Shawn Bruntlett (Eric's older brother) and Doug Tyson (whose brother Kevin was a Braves draftee) were clearly better than the rest of us, because they had great hand-eye coordination and incredible bat speed, allowing them to smash the ball faster and farther than the rest of us, even with old dented aluminum bats.
I just like to stress how rare it is for pitchers to actually face that kind of danger. Of course it happens, but as a statistical percentage, rpackrat's kid is going to be just fine.
I never had anything happen to me, and I'm sure that from a probabilistic perspective it was never likely that anything would happen to me.
That said, I'm not about to let my kids go out on their bikes without helmets. There are vastly more cars on the road then in the past, and the drivers may well be paying less attention to their driving than in the past. Either one of those factors, let alone the combination, says that the risk has to have gone up. Given that the expected outcome of an accident is either catastrophic (death) or effectively so (cf. NFL players and initiate those outcomes before the age of 20), I'm all for reducing the risk.
Add in that my insurance premiums and medical expenses are higher if there are more incidences of long-term care (more likely as we keep more people alive), and I'm even more motivated to impose on David's liberty, because his liberty adversely affects mine. :) [Not, however, that I don't understand his perspective...I just don't happen to be overly sympathetic --- if accidents involving individuals not wearing helmets resulted in death with probability one, I would side with David and be opposed to mandatory helmet laws.]
I know that they're cheaper, but this is yet one more case of our knowing the price of everything and the value of nothing, let alone not knowing that there's something inherently evil about the whole idea of a fucking metal bat of any kind. Aluminum bats make about as much sense as an aluminum baseball---they upset the entire ecology of the game.
Better leave it on full-time. Now that you're "aware" of the danger, you might be liable for taking it off.
When I coached LL, squibbly grounders and humpback singles were pretty much what my kids were capable of, aluminum bats or no. However, teaching them two things turned my teams into relative offensive juggernauts playing an exciting game:
1) bunt! Great for kids that are scared of the pitched ball. One of them even got good enough to go 3b or 1b line, and he'd do it all the time.
2) the ball is in play following a walk. So run to first... and keep going!
Fortunately, the parents mostly dug it, so there wasn't all this "Tommy's a power hitter. Let him swing for the fences!" business.
You know one way around that? Use wooden bats that are thicker than pool cues and jockey's whips, and you wouldn't be breaking them all the time.
You know another way around that? Stop spending money on specially designed ballparks and fancy uniforms, and tell the sponsors to divert some of their money to bats. Present it as a community issue and give them lots of laudatory publicity, as if it were their own idea.
Baseball is NOT inherently all that expensive. It can be played on the amateur level for far less than it generally is. The league I played in as a 19 year old played on a public playground (the Washington Ellipse) with uniforms that were replaced only every few years. Our DC City Champion high school team did the same thing. And guess what? We got every bit as much fun out of the game as they do today, when that same league plays in a designer ballpark and charges $7.00 just to watch.
You know what? That shit is totally UNNECESSARY to play baseball. But to play it right, you DO need a wooden bat.
Except that Easton spends a fortune lobbying/pressuring/buying little league into making sure this doesn't happen. This is why David is wrong. Freedom doesn't work. If you want to get rid of aluminum bats then you need to ban them.
Except that Easton spends a fortune lobbying/pressuring/buying little league into making sure this doesn't happen. This is why David is wrong. Freedom doesn't work. If you want to get rid of aluminum bats then you need to ban them.
I'm sure that there's plenty of big bucks lobbying directed at Little League, but what that says to me is that those who want aluminum bats banned should step up and do some lobbying themselves with Little League, rather than relying on the government to do it for them---not every issue has to be resolved that way.
It's a disturbing trend that private lobbies wield so much influence with governing bodies of institutions like Little League and American Legion, but if citizen lobbying can override insurance companies to get a public option into a health care bill (not guaranteed, but far more likely than it seemed a couple of months ago), then I would hope that the collective cry of parents could override the financial interest of aluminum bat manufacturers, which aren't exactly Blue Cross/Blue Shield. But maybe I'm overestimating the generic run of parent.
Of course it would help if someone told these kids that they don't need to use a whip handle bat to be able to hit a baseball. There are more ways than one to address the problem of affordability.
That's not completely correct. Obviously, neither the swing, nor the velocity of the pitch, are going to generate the force that you see at a major league level. As such, the "exploding" bat is substantially less likely. The problem though, is that a 10-year-old will drag a wooden bat up to the plate with a substantial crack or fracture that he won't recognize. A bat used in that condition can be dangerous, even if it's just a little guy swinging it.
Of course the risks of a batted ball can be significant but I have to say, as someone who still coaches a bit of Little League, I wouldn't put that risk in the top 20 of safety concerns that I have when dealing with a 12 and under group. More mundane stuff like not taking practice swings when they're is somebody standing next to you are of far more concern to me then this type of accident.
That said, I don't have kids of my own but I do have a cat- and if I could strap a helmet on the little ###### he'd be wearing one right now. I completely understand the parental concerns and, whether aluminum bats (in their current form) get banned or not, I'd be very surprised if pitchers aren't wearing helmets within the next generation or two.
The problem is that they don't know what they want. Or that they want the wrong things. Or that the people that run these organizations are corrupt. Or all of these things.
As to Andy I don't see what civil society answer there is since all of the existing civil society organizations have been coopted. What would have to happen is for new organizations to spontaneously develop outside of the existing structures. This is never going to happen. now David will respond that the fact that this isn't going to happen is indicative that it isn't a problem. I would suggest that it is indicative of the powerlessness of living in mass society.
And if forced to choose between these options obviously wooden bats is preferable. Fielders wearing helmets is anethema to God.
I'm not a big fan but I just can't see it being avoided. With respect to the almighty, I'm guessing that once he heard about the "safe baseballs," he completely gave up on the game.
Freedom is apparently only OK if it leads to a result that Gaelan approves of. Hmmm.
As the golf club mention above illustrates, this is not a technology issue. They can make wood or ceramic or metal act like wood and not break. It's all a money thing. Not just expense because wood needs to be replaced and metal can be sold for big dollars, though. It's a matter of getting enough folks together to create a large market for the "limited" bats to justify the investment and cover the lost share by the "fast" bats. If LL or Babe Ruth or MLB's RBI programs just said they'd only allow certified bats and then helped manufacturers certify them you'd see resilient bats that played like wood.
Where I see the problem in this is what age to stop controlling bats and let boys be men. An eight year old probably won't throw 80 nor hit 80, so most kids at that level are not going to face the real dangerous stuff. But some of the guys playing Legion ball are legally adults, and everyone in college should be. I suppose you just start the little kids on the slow bats from day 1, but Easton will never give away the uber-bat market for high school and college and Legion and the rest without a heck of a fight.
Any price advantage of aluminum bats over wooden bats is due to continually replacing broken wooden bats. But if you're talking about youth leagues with 50-60 mph pitches like everyone here seems to be doing, you will not see any broken bats. (You might when the kid starts hitting rocks with the bat at home, but that's the kid's own fault.) Aluminum bats don't last forever, either, they go dead quicker than you might expect, and kids will need to replace them anyway as they get older and need bigger bats.
They do exist.
EDIT: I cannot speak to their relative expense to wooden bats, though, I haven't priced them out.
Little League does have some bat rules, but they aren't super strict. Most leagues (including slow pitch softball) rely on BPF to determine whether or not a bat is legal. ASA does a good job with their bat programs because they actually test them with their own people. Years ago, bat companies did their own testing and they sometimes fudged some of the results for their hotter bats.
Little League Bat Rules
I'm not trying to be insensitive about this kid's family, I can imagine the desire to assign blame somewhere, anywhere, is strong with them. But $hit happens. If I wrap my car around a tree on my way home tonight it's not Acura's fault. At some point isn't it just a matter of deciding how much risk we are willing to take? How many people played baseball with an aluminum bat last year and how many died? If your answer is "one death is too many" then shouldn't we be banning vending machines, elevators, toilets and any number of common items that kill like 3 people a year?
You libertarians, if you had your way everyone would eventually die.
My two year old once hit her head on the counter, and tragically wasn't wearing a helmet. We were forced to rush to her side and listen to her lame cries, until I gave her ice cream. Then she went back to jumping on the couch. This time I did not warn her, figuring the first warning and experience was legally sufficient. But she fell off the couch and landed on her back, and cried again. That time I was out of ice cream, so I agreed to an out of court settlement.
Oh did I say once? I meant she does this three times a day. But never because she loses her balance, because she's not wearing a freakin big helmet in the house like some pathetic, over-parented, nerd. Instead she just climbs things, jumps on things, rides her plasma car scooter at insane speeds in the house, and chases the house cats until she has them cornered, and usually finishes every day with two new bruises, one new lump, and an assortment of scratches.
If I agree to any more out of court settlements, it's gonna be with the cats.
That probably wouldn't satisfy either the trial lawyers or the bat manufacturers, but it's still a good idea. And although I'm not sure of the legalities of this, it might also be a good idea for leagues to require parents to sign individual waivers before allowing the kid to play, assuming you had such a fund to cover bat-related injuries.
Of course IMO they should still ban those bleeping aluminum bats, but if they're not going to do that, then at least this addresses the issue in a far better way than lawsuits and stonewalling.
It's a big problem, but there are two sides to it.
Lots of pitchers get injured badly every year. Head injuries are the worst, but arms, legs, ribs and such happen all the time as well. I'm not sure what you want in terms of proof, but there appear to be lots of studies out there documenting things. It's bad enough that NYC banned metal bats from their school system in 2007.
The thing is, I'm not sure the bat is the problem once your batter gets to a certain strength/size. I read one study that says a typical delta between wood and aluminum works out to around 5-10 mph. That's a tiny slice of reaction time (approx .02-.04 sec.) That's pretty much not going to matter in most cases like this. As much as I think the hopped up lightning sticks are giving hitters a big advantage, once the ball is coming at the pitcher's head he's either in position to field it or he isn't, and 98 vs 92 isn't going to make this all better.
How many people played baseball with an aluminum bat last year and how many died? If your answer is "one death is too many" then shouldn't we be banning vending machines, elevators, toilets and any number of common items that kill like 3 people a year?
There are going to be two standards here. Your average adult is allowed to get himself into more trouble than a student acting in a school-sanctioned event. So sure, let the adults die and sue, whatever, but people will insist kids' activities are safer than that whenever possible. That's why we have things like pitch count limits in LL and maximum games played in most high school sports. It honestly makes sense.
So you'll be wanting the government to buy bats for poor kids, comrade?
EDIT: I played a lot of baseball when I was a kid, batted exclusively with wooden bats, and over 10 years broke one of them. Is breakage really all that common?
Depends on the player and depends on the bat, but I'd be willing to bet that there's a huge inverse correlation between the thickness of the handle and the number of broken bats. I played baseball nearly every non-Winter day from 3rd grade through college and never broke a bat that I can remember. Of course I was always trying to decapitate the pitcher rather than swing for fences that didn't even exist on the fields we played on, so I always used a thick handled, thick barreled bat. It was almost impossible to shatter a Jackie Robinson model.
Only if you're hitting against 90+ mph heat with thin handled bats. So for the situations being discussed in this thread, no.
There probably was a waiver in this case - notice nothing was said about the league being liable, just the bat manufacturer. If the bats were dangerous, wouldn't the league be equally at fault for "failing to warn" absent a waiver? Of course it might be harder to get a verdict against the local Little League than the big, bad out-of-state bat company.
Actually, the victim was an adult, not a minor; thus making a parental waiver irrelevant. From the article:
DB
There still could have been a parental waiver depending on when he turned 18 and whether the league allowed under-18 players, although he could have signed a waiver on his own. Not many places where you can participate in organized sports without some kind of a waiver, even if they're not always enforceable.
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