As reported in the Delco Times, Rep. Mike Carroll (PA-118) is sponsoring a bill to outlaw all non-wood bats for youth baseball and softball in the Commonwealth.

Even though I’m a loving and protective father with a son who participates in youth baseball, I’m still skeptical about this bill on several grounds:

1. Although there are catastrophic injuries from batted balls, they hardly seem frequent enough to demand a governmental response. The number of annual injuries from batted balls has been going down dramatically over time. And injuries still occur in places that use wood bats. This is one of those cases where the fear of shark attack seems inversely proportional to the risk of shark attacks. Resorting to legislation seems like governmental overreaching, even to a confirmed liberal weenie such as myself. Perhaps we should investigate a ban on swimming pools before we ban metal bats. Or cars, guns, and junk food.
2. Even if one agrees that some coordinated response is required, an outright ban of aluminum seems unnecessary. The biggest factor in generating ball speed is bat speed. An aluminum bat can, and often is, manufactured to increase bat speed by manipulating its weight. But the performance characteristics of aluminum bats can be regulated within the sport. The National Federation of State High School Associations seems to have come up with a perfectly reasonable solution of mandating limits on length-to-weight ratio. (In high school competition, bats cannot be more than three ounces lighter than their length in inches.) If you simply stop the arms race in bat engineering, you’ll probably accomplish just as much good. The length-to-weight ratio is a nice solution, because it is easily managed by umpires and coaches on the field of play.
3. The durability of aluminum bats is a boon to youth baseball.

It doesn’t sound like this legislation is going anywhere. (The Delco Times article leads me to believe that our legislator, Bryan Lentz, is dubious too.) Still, this issue pops up in states and municipalities all the time. I don’t understand why this pet issue has so much staying power.

Of course, we grow a lot of the Northern white ash used in wooden baseball bats here in PA. Maybe some industry lobbyists are behind the scheme.