Jury Idiocy Comes to Montana

[Crabby_Bob]

How about the ball?

[tcannizzo]

Why would MLB mandate the use of wood bats when they are the only ones doing it? They do it for the safety of the pitchers...why wouldn't we do something similar...?

Horse manure! If MLB allowed aluminum bats the current stadiums would be obsolete with home runs pushing 500+ feet.

Same reason golf dummies down the balls and the technology otherwise the 600 yard holes would be Par 3's.

[Sam]

Oh for Christ's sake you both make my head spin. Your banter on this topic is nauseating.
Sam. I have always respected your posts, going back to the eteamz days, but this latest diatribe is getting ridiculous. Time to step back and regain your perspective instead of being the old guy yelling at the kids to get off his lawn.
As far as Tumblebug is concerned I am surprised he has allowed himself to be drawn in to this level of discussion being that he represents a manufacturer in this segment.

My perspective is fine, Spaz. I hope to God that it isn't your kid that gets her face smashed by one of these bats. I would think that you would be one to help protect her. She will be one of the kids that throws over 60mph and will have balls hit back at her travelling over 110mph. Baseball got their wakeup call. Thanks to people like TB....we are still asleep and continue to hit the snooze button on the alarm.

Funny....I'm being called names and told to "GFY" .....and I'm the one who is ridiculous...wow

[Sparky Guy]

Funny....I'm being called names and told to "GFY" .....and I'm the one who is ridiculous...wow

Actually... Yes you are. Sam, you're spouting off about how TB and all the bat manufacturers are so bad and cast the innuendo they want to intentionally put a product out there that will cause harm to the players.

You seem to want to vent your frustrations over your daughter's injuries on to TB because he happens to be the only one here from a manufacturer. You may beg to differ, but it seems to be an underlying factor in most of your posts when I read them in other threads as well.

TB offers the LL numbers to support his industry and company. You dismiss them based on your limited experience. When asked you can not provide any numbers to support your continued berating of TB and the bat industry.

If there are numbers out there I will tell you has them. The insurance companies like Bolinger who insure the teams. These companies are professional risk evaluators. If they believed the risks were as high as you espouse to, the cost of insuring teams would be astronomical. The companies who underwrite Anderson and all the other bat companies assess the risks and set the insurance prices accordingly. It's not done through feelings, experience, or emotion. It is done through hard number crunching. Bean counters rule the world.

There will always be rare exceptions, but the general rule is the game of softball is safe for kids to play. The main sanctioning bodies have scientific testing done on all the bats at the manufacturer's expense. TB mentioned a test his bats must be submitted to in an earlier post. I looked up the test and read through some of the methodology behind the tests. They are all to ensure the bats submitted are within the sanctioning body's performance specs. The test submission for listed the cost per model at $1400.

Someone sarcastically suggested you start a league with wood bats and and such. While the post was intended to be ridiculous, there was some truth to it. If there were enough parents who wanted their daughters to be "safe" as you suggest there would be a sanctioning body for it. If there is one I don't know of it personally.

The real criminals are those who are shaving and rolling bats. These are the people who need to be prosecuted.

[Sam]

The point is that you can't have pitchers looking like hockey goalies...they shouldn't have to. Why would MLB mandate the use of wood bats when they are the only ones doing it? They do it for the safety of the pitchers...why wouldn't we do something similar...?

MLB polices itself in limiting pitches to protect the pitchers' arms. Softball does nothing.

It seems to be a pattern with softball....to hell with the pitchers.

There isn't data on the injuries sustained by softball pitchers, so I have my own perception of the frequency of these injuries. It may not be accurate, but it is my own perception.

Thank you, at least, for finally admitting that you have a dog in the fight. That is all I was pointing out in the first place....prior to you getting your panties in a bunch.

all of this is assumption and conjecture. None of this is even remotely lucid. Not a single paragraph bears any validity. As for the last paragraph, you just can't help yourself. You are a complete and total jerk. gfy

When confronted by facts.....attack the messenger....GFY? Is that the best you can do?

Why did Easton sue the NCAA when they tried to change the bat standards?

[Sam]

Do the math Sparky. The bat manufacturers are selling bats that they are producing which meet the testing, but fail the standard. ASA is only recently changing their testing to account for the break in period of the bats and they still don't take into account how the bats are balanced and the whip effect in the bats....that's how these guys compete against each other.

You know nothing about Bollinger. They deny claims or they agree to pay only a certain amount of a claim. Most people have their own health insurance, so the most Bollinger would do would be a copay.

TB offer LL BASEBALL numbers produced by LL Baseball. Will you use tobacco company numbers when deciding what to tell your kid about smoking? I offer MLB as the real standard. NCAA tuned their bats down to 94mph after their testing revealed that their pitchers had less than .4 seconds to react to a shot hit back at them. ASA allows 98mph and has the pitchers throw from 35 feet....bats that meet the test can produce ball speeds of over 120 mph coming back at our daughters. I take it your DD doesn't pitch.

You can claim that TB managers don't abuse pitchers and you can claim that the bats are just fine. I'm trying to wake up the pitchers' parents.

If you don't like it...don't read it.

[Crabby_Bob]

Do the math Sparky. [...] ASA allows 98mph and has the pitchers throw from 35 feet....bats that meet the test can produce ball speeds of over 120 mph coming back at our daughters.

How far will a softball batted at 120mph travel?

[Tumblebug]

Do the math Sparky. [...] ASA allows 98mph and has the pitchers throw from 35 feet....bats that meet the test can produce ball speeds of over 120 mph coming back at our daughters.

How far will a softball batted at 120mph travel?

it's basball but you get the point . . .

According to the "Physics of Baseball" - By Dr. Robert K Adair

"On a 450 foot HR the ball would have left the bat at 120MPH...Of course there is an optimum angle for a long HR, but for the ball to travel that far, it would have had to have an initial velocity of 120MPH, under normal circumstances...Wind, heat and altitude all effect the distance a ball will travel..."

[Tumblebug]

TB offers the LL numbers to support his industry and company. You dismiss them based on your limited experience. When asked you can not provide any numbers to support your continued berating of TB and the bat industry.

If there are numbers out there I will tell you has them. The insurance companies like Bolinger who insure the teams. These companies are professional risk evaluators. If they believed the risks were as high as you espouse to, the cost of insuring teams would be astronomical. The companies who underwrite Anderson and all the other bat companies assess the risks and set the insurance prices accordingly. It's not done through feelings, experience, or emotion. It is done through hard number crunching. Bean counters rule the world.


The real criminals are those who are shaving and rolling bats. These are the people who need to be prosecuted.

I whole heartedly agree with the text in red! Below I quoted myself from the stats post and the info didn't all come from Little League. (sorry I chopped up your post.)

remember this?

The sky is falling, everybody run! The sky is falling . . .

A 2007 study from the National Center for Catastrophic Sports Injury Research shows that there have been only 15 catastrophic batted ball injuries to pitchers out of more than 9,500,000 high school and college participants since 1982.

This was from that first post with statistics. I also quoted the State of New York and US Consumer Product Safety Commission in that post but didn't credit them. Go back and take a look . . .

Thats two federal organizations and a state commission; all are third parties with no financial interest.

Little League is the little guy in that post. I encourage everyone who has a child in the game to do the research themselves. It's self evident if you just do a little digging.

[Sparky Guy]

I take it your DD doesn't pitch.

Not any more.

Her softball career was completed 18 months ago when she graduated college. She started pitching when she was 11 years old playing in-house. After that she went to travel 14U at 12 years old. She's traveled the country with with her travel team always playing up. She pitched the final two innings of the HS state championship game at 15 years old for the win. Her ERA was well under 1.00 and averaged 8.7 k's per 7 innings throughout HS playing in the toughest conference in the state. She was just under 2.0 and 7.8 k's per 7 throughout college. She's played with and against 5 girls who've been in the WCWS, including a series MVP.

I've seen pretty much everything from girls being successful in college to girls being thrown out for poor academics and drugs. To girls quitting because their travel programs never prepared them for college ball. I've seen a girl walk away from a full ride 2 weeks before school started. I've seen them give up a full ride at a D1 to play for a small college close to home because of a boyfriend. I've seen several of them lose scholarship opportunities due to knee injuries suffered playing basket ball during recruiting years. I've never seen one lose anything from a softball injury.

I would have to estimate my daughter throughout her entire career threw somewhere in the area of 800,000 pitches between practices, games, and warm-ups. She never once missed a game due to a pitching injury. She was never seriously injured by a come-backer. She grew up to be a normal, healthy woman despite playing on teams with older girls when she was younger.

I lived the joy of seeing her winning numerous big games, receiving numerous awards, and being interviewed by reporters after HS games. I've also witnessed the utter agony of seeing the last pitch of her career being hit for a grand slam after she pitched her team from the last seed in their college conference tournament to the "if" game. I felt helpless watching her cry in the dugout because she thought she let her teammates down even though she had no more to give physically.

If that's not enough, I've been coaching 10U kids for the last 6 years without a child on the team. So I've seen a lot from the other side of the fence too.

Sam, I've seen pretty much everything this game has to offer, so don't take offense when I'm not moved by your arguments. The impression of you I get from your posts is that you are a curmudgeon who sees the glass as half empty all the time. You seem to be overly bitter for reasons I doubt we'll never know.

You can claim that TB managers don't abuse pitchers and you can claim that the bats are just fine. I'm trying to wake up the pitchers' parents.

Just where did I say that???????? If you would read my earlier posts you will find I stated I would like see everyone dial back the performance levels of these bats. There are too many girls hitting home runs who have no business hitting a ball out.

Please, I beg you. Find and quote me where I said pitchers don't get abused by TB coaches. I never said TB managers don't abuse and overuse pitchers. That was something you admitted to doing in earlier posts at your daughter's expense. I quit coaching my daughter when she started playing 14U. I realized how much I didn't know about the game and let her play for people with years of experience in the game. I sat back with my mouth shut and ears open learning everything I could about the game. She had to fight for circle time because they had 4 pitchers on the team. If she walked two hitters in a row the dugout door was swinging open and the next girl was heading out to the circle. The competition made her mentally tough and kept her working.