Written by Blaine Clemmens
| 21 June 2010
An article was forwarded to me recently, from the Sports Illustrated "Vault", which is an archive of SI articles from years past. This particular article was written in 1989, by Peter Gammons, and it was predicting the end of wood bats in pro baseball, along with many of the arguments made today in 2010, regarding not only the differences in wood and metal bats, but also the positives and negatives of both. Little did they know 21 years ago that the metal bat industry would be a $200M industry. You can read the full article for yourself and there are some statements in there, for the benefit of metal, that don't fit with my beliefs but there are some rationale statements non-the-less. Gammons predictions for the future were quite a bit off the mark in terms of metal getting into the pro game, but the article is a good one to read.
Below is the excerpt that I liked the best... and it is a subject I have been harping on for a long time, that being the dangers to pitchers, aside from safety, that metal bats pose. The dangers detailed below do not discuss injuries to pitchers' arms, but clearly it is an effect that has become a reality. Just ask Dr. James Andrews, whose TJ, labrum, and rotator cuff surgery business is better than he ever wanted it to be, for 14-18 year old kids.
July 24, 1989
What would the Babe think? The crack of the wooden bat is being replaced by the ping of aluminum. And by the end of the next decade, the ping is likely to be heard in the majors
When hitting is altered, pitching is sure to follow, and the aluminum bat has dramatically affected the styles of the pitchers who face it. "Because of aluminum bats, pitching has become an outside game," says Toronto scout Tim Wilken. "Pitchers don't want to pitch inside because, even if they jam a batter [using an aluminum bat], he can dump it to the opposite field for a hit."
"I try to get my pitchers to work inside and forget the opposite-field, jamshot singles," says Long Beach State coach Dave Snow. "But it's tough to get them to do it." Says A's righthander Mike Moore, who was the first pick in the 1981 draft out of Oral Roberts, "It took me years to learn to pitch inside."
"Hitters get conditioned to diving out over the plate to hit the ball," says Wilken. "And because the majority of players in the big leagues today have grown up with that outside style, you see so many hitters get hit or nearly hit by pitches that are very close to being strikes. When major league pitchers use the inside part of the plate, a lot of hitters collapse on the ground as if Bob Gibson had just thrown at them."
Boston righthander Mike Boddicker says, "The strike zone has been pushed out so that the majority of umpires won't call strikes on the inner few inches of the plate. It's practically impossible to get a strike on the inside corner today."
Even more disturbing to some: The aluminum bat practically demands that a pitcher throw breaking balls. "With the aluminum bat the idea is to make the hitter swing and miss," says Grieve. As a result, many in professional baseball believe that college coaches frequently force their pitchers to throw too much breaking stuff.
Says New York Mets vice-president Joe McIlvaine, "When you get 19- and 20-year-old kids throwing a ton of breaking balls, not only do they often hurt their arms, but they don't build up their arms, and therefore their fastballs, at a time when they are developing physically. I cringe when I see some of these college games and coaches are calling 50 and 60 percent breaking balls. The aluminum bat has done a lot of damage to the game, both to hitters and pitchers."
