Top News

OAK LAWN, Ill. (AP) ― Bill Kalant never had a chance to get out of the way of the baseball that put him, as doctors told his father, "on the cliff of death."

The pitcher's parents, sitting a few feet away, heard the familiar "ping" of ball hitting a metal bat, followed an instant later by a sickening thud, but never caught a glimpse of the ball. It was more the position of Kalant's body -- still bent over from throwing a pitch, his glove still near the ground -- than what they'd seen that led coaches to conclude they'd never witnessed a ball hit so hard.

Moments later, the 16-year-old Oak Lawn High School sophomore lost consciousness and like that, even before he came out of a coma two weeks later, he was thrust into an emotional debate over the use of aluminum bats.

At issue is whether aluminum bats have made baseball unnecessarily dangerous. On one side are those who say baseballs fly off these bats much faster than they do wood bats and have led to severe injuries and, in a handful of cases, death. On the other are those who say balls travel no faster off aluminum bats and that there is no evidence they put players at greater risk of injury.

Today, that debate is getting louder. Around the country, after decades of using aluminum bats a small but growing number of college and high school leagues are switching to wood bats. Beginning next season in North Dakota, every high school team will use wood bats -- a move officials say was prompted by discussions that started when a Montana high schooler was killed three years ago.

In Illinois, where Kalant was injured and a college pitcher suffered a fractured skull last year, the state high school association hopes to put wood bats in the hands of players in several conferences next year to study injuries, run production and costs. And in Chicago, the coordinator of the public school district's high school league says he's seen enough of aluminum bats and wants to switch to wood as soon as possible.

"These aluminum bats have been nothing but bad ... for baseball," said Eddie Curry, who oversees Chicago's public school league. "Some of these kids are afraid stiff of line drives coming back to them (and are) afraid of playing baseball because of aluminum bats."

There's no question metal bats have changed the game. Batting averages are higher and there are more home runs in games where aluminum bats are used.

For example, this season in 31 conference games using wood bats, Franklin Pierce College in New Hampshire hit 10 home runs compared with 52 homers in 29 non-conference games using aluminum bats.

"The bats, they're trampolines," said the team's coach, Jayson King. "The ball jumps off the bat."

It is the same story in the Great Lakes Valley Conference, a Division II college conference that switched to wood bats in 1998.

"In 1980 with aluminum bats, we had 104 home runs (and) this year the most home runs in our conference was 14," said Irish O'Reilly, the coach at Lewis University in suburban Chicago.

"If your team is using wood and their team is using aluminum, you can't beat them," he said. "It's like David versus Goliath."

A big reason is that aluminum bats have larger "sweet spots" than wood bats. That means the area on bats that will produce hard-hit balls is much bigger on aluminum bats. So, while it might not be any easier to hit the ball, when players connect it's more likely they will be hitting the ball harder.

In fact, Curry said part of what is driving his push for wood bats is that he thinks they improve players' batting skills -- a sentiment shared by many coaches. He also thinks using the bats gives players a better chance of making it to professional baseball, which still uses only wood bats.

But are those line drives off aluminum bats traveling faster than line drives off wood bats? Are they making baseball more dangerous?

The answer to the first question, say bat makers and others, is they used to travel faster but don't any more. After the 1998 College World Series, in which USC beat Arizona State 21-14, the NCAA took some of pop out of the bats by setting a 97 mph speed limit at which the ball can come off the bat.

"The exit velocity of the ball cannot exceed (a batted ball) coming off the best northern white ash wood bat," said Jim Darby of Easton Sports, a major manufacturer of the aluminum bats.

The second question is tougher to answer. Even though aluminum bats have been around since the 1970s, there is scant evidence one way or the other about whether they've added danger to the game.

For starters, statistics, particularly on the high school level, on batted ball injuries are hard to come by because, officials say, there isn't an adequate injury reporting system.

Further, what statistics are available are incomplete. For example, the U.S. Consumer Product Safety Commission found that between 1991 and 2001 there were 17 players killed by batted balls. But while eight involved metal bats and two involved wood bats, in seven instances the kind of bat wasn't known.

With the pending switch to wood bats in North Dakota, and a study under way comparing injuries among college players using aluminum bats and those playing in wood bat summer leagues, there is hope for some scientific data.

But coaches and others say they know what they see and nobody is going to tell them that balls don't fly off aluminum bats faster than they do wood bats.

"The exit velocity off aluminum bats is dangerous," said Jonathan Harper, associate commissioner of the Northeast-10 Conference, one of the few college conferences in the nation that uses wood bats. "I don't care what it's (exit velocity) set at. It's still metal hitting the ball instead of wood."

At Northern Illinois, coach Ed Mathey believes his pitcher, Mark Badgley, would have caught, deflected or gotten out of the way of the ball that fractured his skull.

"I've never seen a ball come off a wood bat that fast, from a college kid," he said.

Jim McGonigle, spokesman for the Cape Cod League, a wood bat summer league for top college players, said he has no doubt that if the major leagues ever switched to aluminum bats the game would become too dangerous to play.

Had, for example, the batter who hit a line drive that struck Red Sox pitcher David Wells on May 26 been using an aluminum bat, Wells would have suffered much more than a bruised right knee. "We'd be fixing him up for a prosthesis," McGonigle said, only half joking.

And Tony Kalant, though his son has never used a wood bat, said it only makes sense that the ball that hit him wouldn't have been traveling as fast if hit by a wood bat.

"You hear that ping and that ball takes off like a rocket," he said. "There is a hell of a difference between a cheap (wood) bat and ones more high tech, where you get that trampoline effect."

Today, Bill Kalant still moves slowly and his gait is somewhat stiff. But this is also a teenager who had to relearn everything from how to walk to how to tie his shoes.

Of his injury, he simply said, "It's part of the game," and doesn't see any reason to switch to wood bats.

His father, though not a vocal critic of aluminum bats, keeps coming back to how close he came to losing "my buddy."

"I wouldn't want this to happen to anybody else," he said. "In my heart I think I'd rather see them go back to the wood bats."

(© 2006 The Associated Press. All Rights Reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten, or redistributed.)