Wood bats in college for 1999!!--additional thoughts

Apparantely, after talking to our conference commis, this may be a unilateral deal, with the low-to-mid major conferences. The problem will be switching back and forth from aluminum to wood during the season. They tell me that it is a liability issue, related to the "hot" bats and the poor publicity they've gotten from people like Baum, etc. In fact, college baseball injury rates continue to go down, and the survey I had to complete for "Pitchers Hit by Batted Balls" for our school for the NCAA, included but one minor incident all year. Personally, I see this as some of the college conferences running scared--our conference did not even contact the trainers at the member schools to get our input--and they make a change for "injury".

Now, as a baseball purest, I love the change, but how competetive will the teams in our league be if players must switch back and forth? It may help (switching from wood in conference to aluminum in non-league games), or it will totally mess up the timing. For this, I'm glad I don't have to coach through this, just be a fan on the sidelines.

Hey, Bear-Man! What have you heard up 'nawth? JT