http://www.wlky.com/cnn-news/21467637/detail.html

Anderson:…there may indeed be some children’s lives saved as a consequence.

That is very likely true. However the lives saved will be the invisible sort that is the result of leagues in poorer areas not even forming because they cannot afford to replace their current bats with the soon-to-be-required safety-label/ wooden bats.

So, thanks to this ruling, fewer children will be able to play a sport. The parents are morons as were the jurors.

I hope that the pittance they received was worth ruining the fun that, eventually, thousands of children will not have because they never get the opportunity to play the sport their son enjoyed so much.

How about sueing the Sun? The sun was responsible for reducing air moisture which also reduces air density and drag on a ball in flight.

It’s outright disgusting.

Don’t want your child to be injured by a baseball? Don’t let him play baseball. Don’t want him to get hurt from a tackle? Don’t let him play football.

Everyone wants a get rich quick free ride on the US tort system and all of the rest of us are left holding the bag for the costs.

“We should go back to the way baseball is supposed to be played, the way professional baseball is played,” said Debbie Patch.

Oh for the love of Pete. If you want to play baseball with wooden bats, go into a league with wooden bats.

Lacking your ESP abilities, I find myself unable to know whether a label would have discouraged the league from using aluminum bats, or encouraged them to use pitching helmets or L-screens.

This verdict, however, is sure to be widely discussed in leagues around the country. Whatever the final result — and I would suggest to the parents that they settle pending appeal — there may indeed be some children’s lives saved as a consequence. Or maybe not; as I say, I’m a lawyer, not a psychic.

Debbie Patch says she hopes the decision will make more people aware of the dangers associated with aluminum bats and that more youth leagues will switch to using wooden bats.

And here I thought it was just that I sucked at baseball. I must sue the makers of non-BESR bats for ruining what could have been a lucrative career as a ballplayer.

Why is it hard to understand why a ball going 100 mph has about a quarter more energy than a ball going 90 mph?

I don’t think that’s the question. The variation between batters, and between hit balls from the same batter, is no doubt much greater than 11% (in velocity) or 25% (in energy). (And is it energy or momentum that does the damage? That is, is the mortality rate for pitchers hit in the head by balls proportional to the speed or the square of the speed of the balls? Is it non-linear past some level such that aluminum bats at just 11% faster are twice as deadly?)

There are lots of reasons besides safety for a league to specify a maximum performance, like achieving a balance between offense and defense. (Baseball should have baseball scores, not basketball scores and not soccer scores.) Players don’t come to the game to see bat manufacturers think.

The intuitive, and I think the legal, question is “Is it unreasonable to offer a bat that for a given pitcher, batter, pitch and swing will result in a ball with 25% more inertia?”

I do have to admit it’s a judgement call: I think a bat coated with a magic powder that caused balls to come off it at Mach 0.99 would be too dangerous. But having seen aluminum bats in action, it seems obvious that that is not the case for aluminum bats. Most of the time even among line drives hit at the pitcher the pitcher catches or evades the ball, and most of the rest of the time he doesn’t die. (And some of the times — not all that much less — he does even if it’s a “safe” wooden bat.)

The only use for bats that don’t meet BESR/-3 is in beer leagues — recreational baseball for people who won’t play competitive baseball. A batter that used to a non-BESR bat would not be able to use a wood or BESR bat effectively. Consequently, no one who has any hope of playing high school, college. professional or other competitive baseball would use one.

Why is it hard to understand why a ball going 100 mph has about a quarter more energy than a ball going 90 mph? As I said, energy varies as the square of velocity. 100^2 = 10000 which is roughly a quarter more than 90^2 = 8100.

If the baseball bat was advertised as only propelling a ball at speed X and we find that it could propel a ball at speed Y, Y>X, then there is a case.

This depends upon the specifics of the standards and other things I don’t have knowledge of.

Just to clarify, there is no requirement for bats to meet BESR standards. I have no idea whether American Legion ball (which I understand was involved here) requires BESR certified bats or not.

Googling seems to suggest that BESR is required by the NCAA, and that American Legion requires its leagues to follow NCAA bat rules. But BESR does not contain any limit on how fast balls can be hit with the bat. BESR is “Ball exit speed ratio,” and the ratio in question is essentially the incoming speed of the ball and the speed of the swing to the exit speed. In other words, if the ball is thrown harder and/or the bat is swung harder, the bat is allowed to hit it harder, with no maximum; the only limit is on how fast the ball can be pitched in the first place and how fast one can swing a bat.

Nick

uh_clem: 1) The job of the bat is not to “hit the ball as hard as possible” as some have claimed, but to hit the ball in accordance with the BESR standard.

Just to clarify, there is no requirement for bats to meet BESR standards. I have no idea whether American Legion ball (which I understand was involved here) requires BESR certified bats or not. Adult rec leagues usually don’t. People who buy bats are like people who buy golf clubs — they tend to like to buy the devices that allow them to hit the ball farther, which means “harder,” and which have a larger sweet spot. Any league is free to ban any kind of bat or ball it chooses, and any player is free to refuse to play in a league or organize his/her own.

Nobody has mentioned the fact that the whole problem could have been solved if the league required the use of an L-screen in front of the pitcher’s mound to protect the pitcher from come-backers. Given that the L-screen is a widely recognized and relatively inexpensive safety measure, it would seem to be negligence for the league to have failed to require its use during games.

Since the ball field dimensions are not going to be changed (they are anthropomorphically suitable), and nobody wants to change the ball either, the specifications/safety features of the aluminum bat will be changed, until once again most everyone is satisfied that the risk level is tolerable.

Let us pray that the sissies of this world and their lawyers do not prevail and make it into nerf baseball, for that would be a civilizational tragedy. A vigorous education in the school of hard knocks is essential for our humanity.

epluribus:
When somebody is shot to death, would you say that the bullet caused the tragedy and not the gun?

No, actually, I’d tend to blame the shooter.

If you bounce a ball off the ground which is moving zero mph in this frame of reference the ball comes back faster than zero because the kinetic energy was transformed into compressing the ball and the ground and then released to kinetic energy going the other way. Same thing with the ball bouncing off the bat: for the tiny instant the ball is in contact with the bat the kinetic energy it brought into the collision is in the compression of the ball and the bat. It can leave with more speed and more kinetic energy than it had coming in.

But I don’t think that’s what’s happening when the ball is thrown.

And I’ve still got a problem trying to wrap my head around a good reason that a bat which allows the ball to go incrementally (11% ? ) faster is too much more dangerous than another bat which allows the ball to go fast but not quite as fast.

Coffee is not supposed to be that hot, but balls are supposed to be batted that fast.

”this is correct.in motions such as this (not a pitching motion), this is a counterexample to my claim that the ball can’t move faster than the part of the body that releases it.it is not, as you note, applicable to pitching, but it iss correct, so judos to you

Actually, it can apply to pitching, though I couldn’t say if it actually does — the actual requirement is that the part of the ball which is in contact with the fingers at release cannot be moving faster than the fingers. If the ball is spinning, and your point of contact is along the backspin (which I’m pretty sure will always be true), the mean velocity of the ball will exceed the velocity of your fingertips at the time of release (in the case of the ball rolling down your arm, the backspinning side of the ball is actually moving at a speed of zero). However, spin may be due to your fingertips decelerating to apply a spin, and thus velocity may not exceed the peak velocity of your fingertips (I’d want someone who studies the dynamics of sports to answer that one).

You don’t remember your high school physics very well.

1) The job of the bat is not to “hit the ball as hard as possible” as some have claimed, but to hit the ball in accordance with the BESR standard.

2) The manufacturer may have deliberately engineered a bat that met the BESR standard but in practice hits the ball harder than it should.

IOW, there are safety standards in place that say the ball can only be so hard and the bat can only hit the ball so hard. If the manufacturer is gaming the tests to produce a bat that is more dangerous than indicated by the tests, then they might be liable.

IANAL, but merely meeting BESR standards would not be a dispositive defense, any more than meeting other standards would make a manufacturer immune from torts.

I’d need to know more to form a definite opinion, but the suit doesn’t seem entirely frivilous. I do think the plaintiff’s lawyer has an uphill battle…

Now, for the bats. The bats operate as they are supposed to. But *should they operate* that way? Perhaps the manufacturers are making bats that do hit the balls back too quickly, and do cause needless deaths?

I think the argument is that the league/team/batter/pitcher are free to say ‘those bats are too dangerous – make us some cheap durable bats that don’t hit the ball as fast’. If the manufacturer ships you a bat that’s supposed to only hit the ball at 90MPH, but yours hits it at 100MPH because of a manufacturing defect, then you have a case. Earlier in the thread someone said that baseballs come rated that way – you can select from different grades that will give different speeds for the same hit. If you buy one labeled ‘slow’, and it’s actually a mislabeled ‘fast’, sue away – but if you ask for ‘fast’ and get it, the manufacturer isn’t at fault.

In the last few years, a company called ‘Sawstop’ has been selling tablesaws that, magically, detect that the blade has encountered skin and fire a rod into the blade, stopping it instantly. They show videos where they push a hot dog into the blade and the blade stops with only a superficial scratch on the hot dog. The majority of tablesaws, including mine, are still the old fashioned ones that will take your finger off in an instant. I, being of more or less sound mind, have evaluated the tradeoffs and am still using my old saw. Specifically, I considered how careful I am as far as technique, etc, and have decided the small risk to my fingers is less than the $2000 to buy a new saw. If I make that choice, why should I be able to sue the manufacturer of a conventional saw? Sure the new saws are safer, but I, as a rational consumer, may prefer spending the $2000 on a car with airbags, a colonoscopy, or for that matter single malt whiskey.

The league and players have decided they prefer to play with aluminum bats, because they are cheaper or hit farther or both. It seems like the safety tradeoffs are well known. Why is the manufacturer liable for the decision they make?

While you think the lawnmower example is off, the point is that this is how lawnmowers *used to be manufactured* and no one gave it a second thought. It cut the grass perfectly well, and the (very occasional) loss of eye, limb, or life was just an unfortunate…. happenstance. The machine operated like it was supposed to. Hmmm… but was there a reasonable alternative design?

Now, for the bats. The bats operate as they are supposed to. But *should they operate* that way? Perhaps the manufacturers are making bats that do hit the balls back too quickly, and do cause needless deaths?

Again, I am generally unsympathetic to the claim. But to say that it is meritless is to misunderstand the current state of tort law (IMO). I would go so far as to say that it is likely meritless, but I’d need more facts than what the newspaper article gives.

I have no trouble believing that aluminum bats are more dangerous than wooden bats (on the order of 1.5 in a million instead of 1 in a million), that baseballs are more dangerous than softballs, and that softballs are more dangerous than NERF balls. I believe that there can be coffee which is unreasonably dangerous by virtue of being much hotter (while still below 212 degrees) than most other coffee. But I can’t see any way that Louisville Slugger should be liable here, or that this isn’t just the kind of lawsuit that gives ammunition to tort reformers.

Let’s turn things around. Pace the Coach, wooden bats have their own dangers. They can shatter and send jagged shards of hardwood flying toward dugouts (remember Steve Yeager?). If the wooden bat had shattered and a player had been killed by a flying piece, would the manufacturer be liable for not making the bat out of something that couldn’t shatter — like aluminum?

Or another hypo. Pitcher throws fastball, hits batter, kills him. There are different grades of balls, some harder than others. The league uses a major-league standard ball, which is very hard. Is the manufacturer liable for making a harder ball instead of a softer one? When it has evidence that shows that harder balls will cause more injuries than softer balls?

dearieme: “The ball will not, and can not, be going faster than the pitcher’s fingertips”: the truth of that statement depends entirely on the throwing action used (about which I know nothing).But I suspect that I can squeeze out an orange pip from between my fingers so that it flies faster than my fingers were moving.

That would be true to a small degree if the ball were slippery enough to be squeezed out from between the fingers but it’s not. The balls are essentially pre-scuffed. In the real world of baseball the squeeze is not used because, among other reasons, it generates less velocity than the wrist snap and it doesn’t lend itself to very good ball control.

First, given the facts as reported, I tend to be (somewhat) sympathetic to the bat manufacturer. However, I find some of the discussions here very curious. There seems to be a complete disregard for basic concepts of tort law, either because of ignorance or because of basic dislike and/or disagreement with it (I’m thinking of you, DMN). You can make a product that functions *just like it was supposed to* (doesn’t explode etc.) and still be held liable. All of DMN’s snark doesn’t change the current state of the law.

To exaplain this in easier terms, imagine the following:

Maufacturer makes a standard (non-riding) motorized lawn mower. They do not put any guards over the blade. The following happens:
a) The blades kick up stones and hurtle them at nearby people, including the operator, killing or severely injuring them.
b) Operators of the lawn mower have an unfortunate habit of being killed by the blades.

Now, the lawn mower operate exactly as they were supposed to. They cut grass. They didn’t explode. But there is a RAD (reasonable alteranitve design) that should have been used by the manufacturer (guards for the blades).

So, are there *possible* facts that would support a verdict for the plaintiffs? Sure. Imagine correspondence between the Lousiville executives along these lines:

Memo: Hey Bob- did you know that we can minimally comply with the guidelines, advertise our bats as being in compliance, and still get that added “pop”? I mean, it would cause the balls to go off too fast, and might end up in some added injuries and perhaps a death down the road, but would increase our marketshare by .2%. Rock on!

Again, I’m unsympathetic to this claim to begin with, but the posturing here is incorrect.

1) We don’t know all the (relevant) facts.
2) Tort law sucks for manufacturers. You can say that instead of pretending that it doesn’t allow for claims like this.

Baseball coach: To Mr Bolt:If I had said that the ball exits the hand at a velocity greater than that of the fingertips, your comment would be relevant. But I did not say that, and your creative misinterpretation (that the fingertips have to be considered part of the arm) is plainly contrary to what I wrote.

First, it’s Boldt. Apparently I’m not the one with the interpretation problem. If your fingers aren’t part of your arm then what are they? Let’s try an experiment. Cut off your arm and see how much you can do with your fingers.