LOUIS DeLUCA / DMN
FLOWER MOUND – Donnie Norris remembers raising his glove to try to catch the ball and turning his head so he wouldn’t get hit in the face. The next thing the 14-year-old remembers is sitting up on the pitching mound and groggily telling his dad:
“Man, I ain’t pitching anymore.”
That was four weeks ago, when Norris was hit with a line drive on the right side of his face while pitching for his select baseball team, the Carrollton-based Texas Travelers. The Travelers are one of more than 150 youth teams playing this week in the American Amateur Youth Baseball Alliance Open World Series in Flower Mound.
Norris will be watching, not playing. He still needs two more weeks to heal after suffering a skull fracture, which might have been avoided if the batter was hitting with a wood bat instead of a metal one.
“With a wood bat, it probably would’ve been a ground ball to the infield,” said Don Norris Sr., Donnie’s father and the coach of the Travelers under-14 team.
Don Norris Sr. said he doesn’t favor banning metal bats and that it was just a fluke play. But whether metal bats are more dangerous than wood has been debated for years, and tragedy has fueled grassroots efforts to ban them.
In 2003, 18-year-old pitcher Brandon Patch of Miles City, Mont., died after being struck in the side of the head by a line drive. In 2006, 12-year-old Steven Domalewski of Wayne, N.J., was struck in the chest by a line drive while pitching. He went into cardiac arrest and suffered a severe brain injury.
Those in favor of a ban cite a 2002 Brown University study that showed the speed of a ball after impact with metal bats was higher than wood bats. But that same year, the National Consumer Product Safety Commission found no evidence that metal bats pose a greater risk than wood.
Since 2003, metal bats have been required to meet a Bat Exit Speed Ratio for use in most leagues. That limits the maximum velocity a ball can come off a metal bat, in relation to the pitch speed and bat speed, to that of the best wood bats. But the BESR doesn’t mean a metal bat won’t hit harder than wood, some say, because a metal bat can be swung faster.
“Metal bats are made to be weighted toward the handle so you can create more bat speed,” said Joel Swanson, the baseball coach at Shanley High School in Fargo, N.D. “Wood bats are true weight, so you’ve got to be stronger in order to achieve the same bat speed.”
The result, according to Michael Hale, a first baseman for the under-12 Oklahoma (City) Elite, is what many players say:
“Not as much pop in a wood bat.”
After the 2006 season, the North Dakota High School Activities Association banned metal bats for baseball. Part of the reason was the cold weather that caused metal bats to break, said Swanson, who co-wrote the proposal to ban metal bats. But the speed of the balls coming off the bats was another.
The New York City Council also banned metal bats for high school baseball in 2007, but no other city council, high school athletic association or major youth organization has banned metal bats. And Sam Carpenter, who has run the Dallas Mustangs select baseball program since 1986, calls metal bats a “godsend” for youth baseball.
“They give kids a chance to succeed at hitting much, much better than wood bats,” he said, “and if you’re not having fun, if you’re not having success, then you won’t continue.”
Kevin Hull, a shortstop for the under-14 Texas Travelers who has played in some wood-bat tournaments, said metal bats are a big advantage.
“With wood, the ball doesn’t go as far,” he said. “I want to hit with metal and field against wood.”
