Baseball bat bill strikes out [January 22]

Pitching in a high school baseball game last year, junior George Miller was struck in the knee by a ball that was hit so hard he was rushed to the emergency room. This year, his mom, Del. Paula J. Miller, D-Norfolk, introduced a bill to ban the use of aluminum bats in games at Virginia’s public high schools in favor of wooden ones, which she says are safer because they don’t make the ball go as fast. The bill is now being held over for a year’s worth of study, reports today’s Daily Progress. “The sports medicine committee of the Virginia High School League has agreed to study the safety factor,” Miller said. The Charlottesville based Virginia High School League opposes the proposed ban but Dr. Vito Perriello, a Charlottesville pediatrician who chairs their sports medicine advisory committee, said more study of the different bats makes sense. “There certainly is anecdotal information that made people feel that the aluminum bats are more dangerous,” he said.

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