Compromise reached on the use of metal bats

California has tried to reach a compromise in which safety is balanced with economics — and what is currently available — when it comes to bats being used at the high school level.

High school baseball teams in California will have to follow new safety standards for the metal bats they use under rules released Wednesday.

The aluminum bats will be tested to limit the speed of the balls they hit and may include a tamper-proof decal that would change color if the bat was modified to improve performance. While in production, the new bats will be broken in to ensure that their performance — the speed balls travel and the amount they bounce — could not be improved over time with wear.

Schools will be required to use the new bats in January if they are available.

The changes came after 16-year-old pitcher Gunnar Sandberg of Marin County suffered a major head injury when he was hit in the head last March by a line drive off a metal bat.

Assemblyman Jared Huffman, D-San Rafael, said Wednesday that he will withdraw his proposed two-year moratorium on non-wooden bats for high school baseball teams. 

His bill, AB7, sought to ban both aluminum and composite bats until new safety standards were adopted. Huffman said he postponed the bill for months as he worked on safety changes with the California Interscholastic Federation, which sets statewide rules for high school sports.

The new rules released Wednesday will give California a jump start on implementing national standards for aluminum bats, which take effect in 2012.

The CIF announced in July that the composite bats that some high school teams use will also have to meet new national standards. 

Tom Cove, president and chief executive officer of the Maryland-based Sporting Goods Manufacturers Association, said companies are rushing to develop new products to meet the standards.

“There will be bats available, but not enough to sell to the whole market by the beginning of next year,” Cove said.

Cove said the changes would make the new metal bats more “wood-like” and take away some of the benefits of composite bats. He said manufacturers do not yet have the technology to create the tamper-proof decals, and he is working with the standard makers to refine that rule.

Two area baseball coaches, Monache coach Anthony Gale, and Porterville coach Jake Kiser said they welcomed any changes that will make bats safer and less powerful.

“At the college level I’m surprised doesn’t happen more as far as serious injuries,” Gale said. “The safety issue is highly important.”

Talking about a ball that comes off an aluminum bat, Gale also said, “it’s going to go back faster a lot of time than it comes. The baseball just jumps off the bat.”

Kiser echoed that sentiment. “The metal bats have gotten ridiculous,” he said.

Kiser said the NCAA is also looking at requiring its member schools to require the tamper-proof decals for bats for its member schools as soon as possible and that junior colleges would follow suit.

Any move to make aluminum bats less powerful would make for a more pure game, Gale and Kiser said.

“It’s a more pure form of baseball than we’ve seen,” Gale said. When talking about aluminum bats, Gale said, “It’s just not the purest form of baseball.”

But Gale said it may not be economically feasible to switch to wood bats. “You just can’t jump to the wood bat,” he said.

The price of aluminum bats, though, have become extremely high, reaching as high as $400. But with the number of wooden bats that could be broken, high schools may not be able to afford it if they were required to use wooden bats.

“I would have to do some serious fund-raising,” Gale said.

While admitting they are lesser quality, Kiser said he has many of his players use Baum bats, more wooden-like composite bats that are guaranteed not to break. Those bats cost $145. He did say he believed that high school players by and large don’t throw hard enough or swing hard enough to break a large number of bats.

But any move away from the