Quote :

"After this lawsuit, the family plans on suing every member of their genealogical tree for not having faster reflexes."

[Edited on May 19, 2008 at 5:49 PM. Reason : /]

5/19/2008 5:48:47 PM

There's a shitton of people who get injured from this. I pitched some in dixie youth(minors/majors) and middle school and I've lost count of the number of times I got hit(mainly off the shins) or just barely dodged a ball coming at my head.

we were at the dixie youth girls softball world series in louisiana with my cousin a couple years ago. The girl pitching in the 16-18yr old league got hit in the throat with a line drive. She fainted from the pain. Probably the scariest thing I've seen and hell, I thought it killed her. She was back pitching the next day though. I thought the mound was way too close for as hard as most of those girls were throwing but those aluminum bats sure as hell didn't help.

5/19/2008 5:50:14 PM

Starting next week, all LL pitchers have to wear these:

5/19/2008 5:53:15 PM

No way this goes anywhere....

How many rec softball guys get beaned by "Endorsed" bats every year and are seriously injured? This would open up a floodgate of frivolity. It's a sad story but not going to become precedent.

5/19/2008 6:05:23 PM

It better not go anywhere....

If anything the ball hit him in the chest so it could have been caught.

5/19/2008 6:09:28 PM

When I was a kid playing baseball some kid in another city got hit in the chest by a pitch and his heart stopped, if a little kid's pitch can stop someone's heart, I think the wood bat could too... also, we all had to wear chest padding for the rest of the season when we were batting.

5/19/2008 7:07:42 PM

there is no way to prove explicitly that no other bat (wood or metal) would have done the same thing. it's a freak accident and it sucks for the family and the kid, but there's no way to know that he wouldn't have suffered the same loss of oxygen had they been swinging any other bat at the time. i mean where do you draw the line? what's next, the company that makes the balls they used? the batter? hell the batter had the most control over this happening, why isn't he being sued? i'd suspect it's because his family's pockets aren't deep enough for them to be included in the exploitation.

5/19/2008 7:15:04 PM

some softball leagues have started using softballs that are spongier and absorb more of the impact. You can definitely see and hear the difference. And I've never seen balls come off a bat harder than the newer aluminum bats. It'd be cool to set up some sort of contraption that swings different type bats at the same speed while hitting a ball. I'm almost willing to bet there's a significant difference.

5/19/2008 7:24:10 PM

What if the parents are not trying to be money grubbing whores and are just trying to bring attention to an issue that they otherwise could not without filing a lawsuit. Lets say this case goes through, and because of it more research is done and it is determined that aluminum bats are unsafe and are phased out. Two years from now a kid it hit with a ball off a wooden bat that would have killed him off an aluminum one. Isn't the lawsuit worth it then?
I know the first thing everyone things when they hear "lawsuit" is that there must be some greedy people that want something for nothing, but maybe, just maybe that isn't the case here.

5/19/2008 7:34:22 PM

lawsuits will bring attention to an issue regardless, so in a sense just by filing or threatening to file, they've already increased awareness

i'm just not entirely convinced that outlawing aluminum bats would prevent this from ever happening again...i'd like to see them get rid of aluminum bats for other reasons, but you can still hit a baseball pretty hard with a wooden bat, and if it hits you at just the right spot it could still fuck you up...seems like more of a freak accident than something that could be prevented with wooden bats, but i dunno

5/19/2008 7:37:56 PM

I think a change in the ball would have a bigger impact. I got hit in the back of the head with a baseball last week by a 9 year old and he didn't even throw it hard. fucker still hurt like hell.

5/19/2008 8:11:17 PM

change in the ball for what though, for all Little League games? this wasnt even a Little League game, they're just saying Little League said the bat was safe

5/19/2008 8:15:50 PM

hmm...didn't see that part. kid was probably way too close then and the parents should be held responsible.

5/19/2008 8:23:11 PM

i think its just a freak accident myself but who knows all the details...not us

5/19/2008 8:26:50 PM

Life is unfair, get over it

5/19/2008 8:40:52 PM

if this wasnt a LL game, i'd be interested to know the age of the person that had the hit.


the only reason aluminum bats are even used is because kids would never be able to swing a wooden bat of the same dimensions, they're too heavy and have a center of gravity slighty further out from the handle for an average LL aged kid to be able to swing well.

oh and college should definitely use wooden bats.


[Edited on May 19, 2008 at 8:49 PM. Reason : /]

5/19/2008 8:43:58 PM

This is why it is important to keep the ball down. This kid obviously sucked at pitching.

5/19/2008 8:55:49 PM

have you read somewhere where it said the kid was pitching? Everything I have seen does not go into too many specifics about the incident.

5/19/2008 9:15:23 PM

Quote :

"Steven was pitching in a Police Athletic League game when he was hit just above the heart by a line drive"

Like the 5th paragraph

[Edited on May 19, 2008 at 9:18 PM. Reason : #]

5/19/2008 9:17:27 PM

So a kid was pitching to adults in a bush-league softball game?

Great idea.

5/20/2008 12:27:01 AM

Sucks for this kid and I don't like the lawsuit, but it I'd like to see the leagues do a better job of enforcing bat regulations to control batted ball speed. It certainly won't stop every accident, but you need to give pitchers and fielders enough time to react.

There are many medical studies that have come up with "safe" reaction times required for most fielders. I have no problem with them looking at the objective scientific data and actually enforcing rules to achieve reasonable safety conditions.

(I believe the rules are already in place -- they just aren't enforced)

------------
Just read more of the thread -- The type of bat certainly does make a difference in batted ball speed. Some people don't seem to believe this. A lower batted ball speed absolutely does reduce the chance of injury. That's why titanium bats and other kinds of bats are banned in various leagues.

A controlled study on batted ball speed and available pitcher reaction time in slowpitch softball
http://bjsm.bmj.com/cgi/content/abstract/39/4/223


[Edited on May 20, 2008 at 12:52 AM. Reason : There are also studies addressing the balls, too]

5/20/2008 12:39:38 AM

Quote :

"but it is not hard to argue that aluminum bats are unsafe."

If it was Little League baseball then the parents signed a waiver assuming all liability of putting their kid on the field. Not that it isnt unfortunate, but Little League baseball is THE premier league for protecting their players via equipment, pitch counts, background checks on umpires/coaches, etc. I find it hard to believe LLB would leave itself open to liability like this.

5/20/2008 12:54:40 AM

Quote :

"I know the first thing everyone things when they hear "lawsuit" is that there must be some greedy people that want something for nothing, but maybe, just maybe that isn't the case here."

This is America...who do you think your kidding?

5/20/2008 12:57:34 AM

My mother in laws sister committed suicide, and while at her house for the funeral her son fell in the backyard on the partially built patio and cut his forehead. She sued her brother in law. Her grounds were that the construction area wasn't properly marked off, even though it was just a small project left half done because the mans wife had just committed suicide. The injury didn't require stitches or leave a scar, none the less she won the case for $25,000. My mother in law is a bitch by the way.

5/20/2008 1:22:15 AM

Quote :

"So a kid was pitching to adults in a bush-league softball game?"

I don't know if that was serious, but no, it's a league sponsored by police, not played by police. Apparently there are these all over the country, but only dumbasses who live in NY or NJ need them because they suck.

And I don't know if it's been really covered, but there's no way to prove that the bat wasn't perfectly safe. BESR has to do with the ratio of the ball coming off the bat, so if somebody swings harder, according to the ratio, the ball will come off harder. Also the same is with the pitcher throwing harder. There's no way they could prove how hard the kid who hit it may have swung, so as much as the only company that may have been at fault (Louisville Slugger) should be the only company to pay, I don't see how you could prove that the bat wasn't perfectly acceptable by any standard that has been out there for years and played with by millions of kids and young adults in high school and college

5/20/2008 3:14:42 AM

has nobody else mentioned that the bat was 31-inch, 19-ounce? Holy fuck that's light. I remember when those silver Easton's with the "corked" see-thru like tops came out and that thing was like 31-24 or something and you could fucking CRANK with that thing. I think I hit like seven homeruns in my seventh grade travel league and I was like 5'10"/130 lbs.

Granted, that was like 92 or something and I'm sure bats have changed a lot since then (or even since my high school days where the red Easton Core was the hot bat), but that bat seems super light. Talk about bat speed!

[Edited on May 20, 2008 at 9:33 AM. Reason : .]

[Edited on May 20, 2008 at 9:33 AM. Reason : .]

5/20/2008 9:32:34 AM

Quote :

"My mother in laws sister committed suicide, and while at her house for the funeral her son fell in the backyard on the partially built patio and cut his forehead. She sued her brother in law. Her grounds were that the construction area wasn't properly marked off, even though it was just a small project left half done because the mans wife had just committed suicide. The injury didn't require stitches or leave a scar, none the less she won the case for $25,000. My mother in law is a bitch by the way."

Ya think?!

Christ, it's no wonder the sister killed herself with a future of that to look forward to.

5/20/2008 9:41:35 AM

let's sue the hot dog man also. He clearly could have done more to prevent this heinous misfortune.

5/20/2008 12:49:27 PM

I'm a bit unclear of the basis of this lawsuit, is a bat not supposed to be able to make a ball go fast? I kinda thought thats what they did.

5/20/2008 12:50:56 PM

^ the basis of this lawsuit is that the parents want one or all of these groups to just pay them off with a settlement to avoid the time and expense of a lawsuit because they refuse to accept the consequences of letting their child play baseball.

5/20/2008 3:14:19 PM