Fact Sheet:

Baseball Is a Very Safe Sport

• The National Collegiate Athlete Association (NCAA) Injury Surveillance System has found that men’s baseball is one of the safest of the 15 NCAA sports surveyed, and has a game injury rate lower than, for example, football, soccer, lacrosse, women’s basketball, women’s gymnastics and field hockey.  Only women’s volleyball and women’s softball are ranked safer sports.
  
  
• A study by the National Center for Catastrophic Sports Injury Research at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill showed that in the past twenty years, a catastrophic injury to a pitcher occurred only once for every million high school aged participants.
  
  
• By contrast, according to the National Safety Council, the odds of being killed in a car accident are 1 in 6498, but no one has proposed banning cars.  The odds of being killed falling off a ladder are 1 in 697,000, but no one has proposed banning ladders.  And the odds of drowning in a bathtub are 1 in 876,000, but no one has proposed banning baths.

Wood Bats and Aluminum Bats are Safe

• The Consumer Product Safety Commission (CPSC) stated “Available incident data are not sufficient to indicate that non-wood bats may pose an unreasonable risk of injury.”   [April 5, 2002]
  
  
• A federal judge recently concluded that there is “no empirical evidence” that wood bats cause fewer serious injuries than metal bats.

• In a letter to a petitioner seeking CPSC regulation of non-wood bats, the CPSC wrote, “You have provided no information, nor is the Commission aware of any, indicating that injuries produced by balls batted with non-wood bats are more severe than those involving wood bats.”

• The CPSC wrote, “Based on its review of all the available information, the Commission concluded that a mandatory standard is not reasonably necessary to address an unreasonable risk of injury posed by non-wood bats.”  

Bat Performance Is Regulated by the Governing Bodies for Youth and Amateur Baseball

• Since 2003, metal bats used in high schools have been scientifically regulated so that the speed of batted balls off metal bats is comparable to the speed of a ball hit off the best major league wood bats.  This standard has been adopted by the NCAA and the National Federation of State High School Associations (NFHS).

• A ban on non-wood bats is opposed by American Legion Baseball, the NFHS, NCAA, American Baseball Coaches Association, Little League, Babe Ruth League and PONY League.  In New York City, the ban is opposed by the Public School Athletic League and the Catholic High School Athletic Association.

Here’s What They’re Saying...

“The highest priority of the world’s largest organized youth sports program has always been, and will continue to be, the safety of our nearly 3 million annual participants…Considering there were approximately 170 million at bats by nearly 3 million players in 2005, we do not believe the injury data warrants such a wide sweeping change based on perception and anecdotal information alone.”

-Stephen D. Keener
President, Little League International

“There is no credible evidence that non-wood bats are more dangerous than wood bats.”

-Paul Seiler
Executive Director, USA Baseball

“…Our membership is pretty satisfied with where things are with our aluminum bats. Our research shows they perform sufficiently close to the performance of a wood bat. They're economically more viable, and as we've talked about, not every institution can afford to buy wood bats throughout the season, so aluminum bats economically make more sense for a lot of our programs. I don't see any change on that horizon in the near future.”

-Damani Leech
NCAA Associate Director of Baseball and Football