Lawyers Love Exploding Maple Baseball Bats

From its quiet introduction some 10 years ago, more and more major league hitters have begun to switch from the classical wooden bats from the ash tree, which are very hard and sturdy and only occasionally break, to a less dense wooden bat from the lighter maple trees, which are rather more fragile.  By the 2008 season maple bat use had exploded to around 60 percent of MLB players.

Why the switch?  Current players believe that a lighter maple bat of the same size is easier to swing, thereby generating higher bat speed, hence applying more force to a squarely-struck ball, causing it to rebound off said lighter bat with greater velocity, so as enable said ball to travel a greater distance from the ball-striking location, hopefully to beyond the outfield fence before returning to the planet’s surface due to the force of gravitational attraction, thereby allowing the lighter-bat-wielding hitter to trot leisurely around the bases, along with each of the up-to-three teammates who may already be occupying bases one through three, so as to append additional runs to his team’s tally total, thereby making it more likely that his employing team will emerge victorious in the current contest, concurrently improving said lighter-bat-wielding player’s statistical output and his chances of negotiating a new contract at a substantially higher salary as well as his chances of being named to the All-Star Team, thereby triggering an incentive clause in his current contract and forcing his current employer to pony up ridiculously more money as a bonus and also enhancing his lifelong dream-since-he-was-a-little-kid of going to Cooperstown and being enshrined into the Hall of Fame.

Unfortunately, but much to the legal profession’s delight, these new, lighter bats are also prone, when struck by a pitched ball at a less than ideal spot upon this, in their eyes, egregiously designed and fabricated club-shaped instrument, to explode into a zillion tiny pieces and often one or two large, sharply pointed ones screaming toward the heretofore inadequately warned and with wanton disregard completely unprotected paying customers.

These widely used new bats exploded with alarming regularity throughout the 2008 MLB season and have already led to injuries:  Pirates coach Don Long was struck in the face, creating a 10-stitch gash and nerve damage;  a Dodgers fan’s jaw was broken in two places;  an umpire in Kansas City received facial cuts;  and a Mets fan was struck and subsequently left with permanent facial plates.

The league is well aware of this exploding maple bat problem yet to date has utterly failed to correct said matter and remove this faulty equipment from use and ban its very existence.  While MLB last year did commission a detailed study of these maple bats’ breakage properties, the outcome to date includes such rigorous recommendations as:  “manufacturers must place an ink dot on the handle,” “handles must be natural or clear finish,” and “manufacturers must track bats with a serial number.”

Such definitive action by MLB no doubt has U.S. personal-injury attorneys anticipating batters stepping into the box with explosive excitement.  You can be certain that the American Society of Suers Examining Sports (ASSES) has already set up a hotline for the first time that Little Johnny has a flying maple-wood bat shard impale his fragile torso into the back of his $250-a-pop box seat, giving him an eternal seat at Heaven’s state-of-the-art plasma Jumbotron TV, or Sister Agnes gets an express elevator ride to meet her Maker following a shard into her habit-covered cranium.

The likely outcome from such a, heaven forbid, fan’s mortal injury from the explosion of a maple baseball bat during a MLB game?

• The non-ash bats will be immediately banned from future use, and all existing ones will be recalled, then burned in an enormous pyre in Little Johnny’s and Sister Agnes’s memories.  Marshmallows will be provided by the ASSES.
• The companies that made the maple wood bats will be sued out of existence, thereby ending baseball’s wooden bat era entirely, since these same companies also produce the ash bats.  Ping!  Metal bat era, here we come.
• The players that swung the killer bats will be locked up for the rest of their natural lives for committing manslaughter, and for swinging at pitches so ridiculously far inside.
• The tree farms that grew the wood for these maple instruments of death will be forced to use their future tree harvests to build only coffins as an everlasting reminder of their deadly deeds.
• MLB, in an all-out attempt to protect game attendees from any possible projectile from the playing field, from foul balls, fractured and flung bats, to spit gobs of tobacco juice, will be forced to enclose every field with a Plexiglass shell from field level to the lights, a super-sized extension of the hockey rink idea.  Fans wanting player autographs or foul balls will be forced to buy them.  Score another one for Capitalism!
• MLB will pay monetary damages of such enormity that they’ll wind up in the minor leagues, travelling by bus and staying in flea-bag hotels.
• Future MLB tickets will feature a six-page foldout listing every possible warning and safety alert, from choking on a hotdog, to sunburn, to paper cuts from a program, to slipping on spilled beer, to falling over the upper deck railing in a drunken stupor, to clinical depression from yet another Pittsburgh Pirates losing season, so as to pre-emptively strike at future lawsuits.
• And finally, U.S. personal-injury lawyers, the ASSES, with their new-found riches, will all join country clubs and move to golf courses, where they will begin their next vigil of ensuring the safety of golf fans everywhere.

  05.15.09

  (An earlier version of this article appeared on Associated Content.com)