Sports

Your Take: Baseball Bats - Wood vs. Metal

The debate has gone on for many years, and comes to the forefront again after a horrific injury to a local high school player.

The recent injury suffered by Fermi High School baseball player Dan Brunetti has re-ignited the years-old debate about the safety of metal bats versus wooden ones. 

Brunetti was pitching for the Falcons May 13 when a line drive off the metal bat of a Rocky Hill player struck him in the face, causing multiple fractures to his orbital bone and cheekbone. 

Since his injury, a number of people have expressed a desire for high school, college and even youth leagues to ban metal bats and return to the use of wood. 

A metal vs. wood experiment done by a physics professor at theNew Jersey Institute of Technology showed "the energy transferred to the balls by the aluminum bats was significantly higher than that transferred by the wooden bats." 

In 2003, an 18-year-old pitcher at a Montana high school was killed after being struck in the chest with a batted ball off an aluminum bat. His family filed a lawsuit against the bat company, claiming their son had no time to react to the ball because it came off their aluminum bat too fast. A judge ruled in favor of the family and awarded them $850,000. 

Following the Brunetti incident, Patch spoke with a number of players, coaches and administrators from various levels to get their thoughts on bat safety. 

  • "Even before this happened, I have always been an advocate of wood bats, from high school and college into the pros. Everyone's goal is to make it there, so why not set yourself up by using a wood bat earlier." - Dan Brunetti, Fermi High School player 
  • "I'm a proponent of wood, I think baseball should go back to wooden bats. It makes the game more realistic in terms of hitting and safety also. The American Legion has gone back to wood in certain zones and the state Legion tournament is all-wood." - Bob Cressotti, Fermi High School coach
  • "I never really understood why, when you get to the highest level of play and you don't use aluminum bats - why would we have student-athletes learn to use something that they can't use beyond?" - Paul Newton, Fermi High School principal
  • "If kids have any potential future in any sense of the word down the road in the sport professionally, they're going to have to play with a wooden bat. With the type of strength and power that younger kids generate today as opposed to 10 or 20 years ago, they're hitting the balls hard enough to cause a significant injury even off a wooden bat, though certainly not as fast as coming off an aluminum or a composition bat." - Barry Bernstein, Enfield coordinator of athletics
  • "They've kind of deadened the aluminum bat so it's not as potent as it used to be, and people still get hit even at the major league level. It's a part of the game, and guys have to be a little more conscious of how they deliver the ball and be set for ball hit back at them." - Billy Jo Robidoux, former major league baseball player and current high school umpire  
What's your take on baseball bats? Should youth and school leagues go back to using wooden bats? Tell us in the comments section below.


Get more local news delivered straight to your inbox. Sign up for free Patch newsletters and alerts.

We’ve removed the ability to reply as we work to make improvements. Learn more here