I wasn’t sure I’d ever see something dumber than the designated-hitter rule, but then New York’s city council decided last month to ban aluminum baseball bats.
Believe me, I like few things better than the sweet sound of a baseball cracking off the fat end of a wooden bat. That’s doubly true when the guy in the batter’s box is wearing a St. Louis Cardinals uniform.
Yet the ban on aluminum bats makes about as much sense as hurling a high fastball over the middle of the plate to Cardinals slugger Albert Pujols. It’s something you just shouldn’t do.
The anti-aluminum faction of New York’s city council says that it simply wants to protect high-school players from sharply-hit line drives.
New York’s ban is a perfect example of the “precautionary principle”--the concept that when an activity might conceivably cause harm, then it should be outlawed even in the absence of scientific evidence. Unfortunately, the firm application of the “precautionary principle” often leads to outcomes that are as harmful as they are ridiculous.
When metal bats first became popular in the 1970s, players were attracted to them not because they performed better than wooden ones but because they lasted longer. Whereas wooden bats sometimes shatter on contact with fastballs, aluminum bats are as durable as Cal Ripken, Jr., baseball’s Iron Man.
Over time, however, technological advances have allowed bat companies to make aluminum bats with lightweight alloys.
The bat ‘banners’ of New York cite the research of Richard M. Greenwald, the executive director of the National Institute for Sports Science and Safety. He has co-authored studies claiming that some metal bats outperform wooden ones. Not only do they permit faster swings, but their hollow core allows them to take advantage of a “trampoline effect”. When they smack balls, they flex inward and then outward, giving balls more velocity as they ricochet into the playing field.
All of that may be true. But does it make aluminum bats more dangerous than wooden ones? If you’ve ever watched a major-league baseball game, in which only wooden bats are used, you know that wooden bats can deliver crushing hits.
As it happens, Greenwald balks at the suggestion that metal bats pose a special safety hazard. “To my knowledge, there are no published, peer-reviewed articles that show there is an increased incidence of injury from the use of aluminum bats,” he recently told the Washington Post.
“If they’re talking about regulating the game from a safety perspective, then it seems logical that they would identify a safety issue first,” said Greenwald. “We just need to see peer-reviewed published data that says there’s a problem.”
As of now, no such data exist. That means New York’s ban is based upon nothing more than an unproven prejudice. Yet that’s precisely how the “precautionary principle” operates.
In Europe, the “precautionary principle” has become like a worn-out starting pitcher who has surrendered run after run and deserves to be replaced on the mound. Anti-biotech activists have used it to keep farmers from adopting genetically improved crops as rapidly as their colleagues in the United States and around the world because of the ‘possibility’ that biotech food presents a health hazard.
The fact remains that nobody has ever offered any evidence to verify this claim. Yet the “precautionary principle” is essentially blind to what science tells us--and we’re all suffering, because Europe’s irrational, baseless doubts are putting the brakes on agricultural progress everywhere.
The good news for baseball players in New York is that they’ll still get to play baseball. It will just cost more as they replace the broken wooden bats rather than using the metal ones that last forever. They’ll continue to enjoy the sport, but they won’t be any safer. Pitchers will still have to get their gloves up when line shots zip their way and fastballs may still bean batters in the head. Just about any sport has its potential for injury: Football helmets and hockey sticks can be as dangerous as baseball bats.
The bottom line is that even if the “precautionary principle” means well, it routinely fails to achieve its goals. In sports, it gets in the way of fun. In farming, it gets in the way of feeding the world.
Dean Kleckner, an Iowa farmer, chairs Truth About Trade and Technology. Mr. Kleckner is a life-long St. Louis Cardinals fan.
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I wasn’t sure I’d ever see something dumber than the designated-hitter rule, but then New York’s city council decided last month to ban aluminum baseball bats.
