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The Weekend Buzz while you were saving up for the Dirty Harry boxed DVD set:
1. Do you feel lucky? That's the question you must ask yourself (maybe even in a Dirty Harry Callahan voice) if you're going to a big-league game these days of exploding maple bats.
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| The number of broken bats is becoming a safety issue that is close to reaching emergency proportions. (Getty Images) |
Then Nate McLouth's bat blew up on a swing and a large chunk helicoptered toward the visitors' dugout. Long was watching the ball -- a guy's first mistake in these days of maple bats -- and the piece sliced open a hideous gash on the left side of his face. It damaged a nerve and Long still doesn't have feeling in part of his upper lip.
No doubt, a baseball fan named Susan Rhodes was feeling lucky that day in April when she went to a game with friends and sat a few rows behind the Dodgers' dugout.
Then Todd Helton's bat exploded, Rhodes never saw it coming and next thing she knew, she needed surgery on her jaw. It broke in two places -- could be considered lucky, compared to how many places the maple bats break -- and she's still got numbness in her lips and chin, headaches and memory loss.
"I have a lot of clubs every day sending me articles and telling me what happened in their ballpark," commissioner Bud Selig said last week during a conversation in Angels Stadium. "I'm very sensitive. I'm very concerned."
He has directed his staff to investigate, and two sources last week acknowledged that baseball officials are negotiating with players union representatives to see if they can reach a solution.
The proliferation of maple bats -- a Louisville Slugger spokesman estimated his company now produces about 60 percent maple bats vs. 40 percent ash bats for the majors these days -- and their tendency to violently shatter has created a workplace safety issue that is close to reaching emergency proportions.
Or better yet, out of respect to Long and Rhodes, it already has reached emergency proportions. Baseball must act, and act quickly.
"I've never seen so many bats broken in my life," Detroit manager Jim Leyland says. "They talk about the best wood, the best this and that ... either the pitchers are so good they're jamming the s--- out of everybody, or the bats are that (bad).
"I've never seen so many bats flying, breaking in half. ... I've never seen anything like it in my life. It's mind-boggling. Every game, somebody's ducking a bat.
"We spend more time picking bats up in the infield than we've done at any time in the history of the game.
