Metal Bats Here to Stay
May 11, 2007

Copyright 2007, Sun Chronicle (MA)

BY MARK FARINELLA SUN CHRONICLE STAFF

FRANKLIN - Efforts to rid Massachusetts high school baseball of the supposed threat posed by metal bats failed again Thursday.

Meeting at the Franklin headquarters of the MIAA, the Massachusetts Interscholastic Athletic Council voted 12-3, with one abstaining, against a rule change that would ban metal bats as of July 1.

The bat ban, rejected for the third time since 2003, was one of 34 proposed rule changes addressed Thursday by the 18-member MIAC, made up of officials of the Massachusetts Interscholastic Athletic Association and principals, school committee members and other administrators from across the commonwealth. Paul Carroll of Foxboro, representing the Massachusetts Association of School Committees, and North Attleboro High School Principal Robert Gay are the two local representatives on the panel.

Among Thursday's other decisions, the MIAC ratified the change of the pitching distance in high school softball from 40 feet to 43 feet next year, and rejected a proposal to increase high school hockey periods from 15 to 17 minutes.

The MIAC also tabled until November a much-discussed proposal to require game officials to remain on site to oversee game-ending handshakes as a means of enforcing sportsmanship.

The panel heard nearly two hours of testimony from individuals on both sides of the bat issue before coming to the same conclusion that it has twice before. Testimony that metal bat use was inherently dangerous to athletes was refuted by individuals who said that the performance of the newest generation of aluminum and composite bats was negligibly different than wood bats.

"Wood is the name of the game," King Philip Regional High baseball coach Ed Moran said, "but once the sports medicine people were telling us that there was no scientific evidence to support the premise that metal bats are more dangerous, as a high school coach with a budget, a couple of bats that will last for the whole year make a lot more sense."

Norm Walsh, Boston College High School's baseball coach and president of the Massachusetts Baseball Coaches Association, said 85 percent of his organization's membership favored keeping the decisions on bat use with the individual leagues.

"My league is a wood-bat league, and it's my aesthetic preference," Walsh said. "But it's pretty clear to us that a huge difference in the performance of the different kinds of bats does not exist."