[VioletlightHeron]

Geeez, I didn't think any team would actually trade a player for some equipment.... :lol: hock:

<!-- m --><a class="postlink" href="http://sports.yahoo.com/mlb/news;_ylt=Asl_zXsvDKNY0RfEeDpvLwfavrYF?slug=ap-tradedforbats&prov=ap&type=lgns">http://sports.yahoo.com/mlb/news;_ylt=A ... &type=lgns</a><!-- m -->

Minor leaguer traded for 10 baseball bats
By CHRISTOPHER SHERMAN, Associated Press Writer


McALLEN, Texas (AP)—During three years in the low minors, John Odom never really made a name for himself.

That sure changed this week—he’s the guy who was traded for a bunch of bats.

“I don’t really care,” he said Friday. “It’ll make a better story if I make it to the big leagues.”

For now, Odom is headed to the Laredo Broncos of the United League. They got him Tuesday from the Calgary Vipers of the Golden Baseball League for a most unlikely price: 10 Prairie Sticks Maple Bats, double-dipped black, 34-inch, C243 style.

“They just wanted some bats, good bats—maple bats,” Broncos general manager Jose Melendez said.

According to the Prairie Sticks Web site, their maple bats retail for $69 each, discounted to $65.50 for purchases of six to 11 bats.

“It will be interesting to see what 10 bats gets us,” Melendez said.

The Canadian team signed Odom about a month ago, but couldn’t get the 26-year-old righty into the country. It seems Odom had a “minor” but unspecified criminal record that wasn’t revealed to immigration officials before they scanned his passport, Vipers president Peter Young said.

Odom said the charge stemmed from a fight he was in at age 17. Although he thought it had been expunged from his record, it popped up during immigration.

Odom spent hundreds of dollars driving to the Canadian border and staying at a Montana hotel while the matter was sorted out. He then drove to Laredo after the trade.

Originally from Atlanta, Odom was drafted late by the San Francisco Giants in 2003. He pitched 38 games, all in Class A, from 2004-06, and was released by the organization this spring.

Laredo intends to activate Odom on Monday and have him make his first start Wednesday.

Odom said he was supposed to be traded for Laredo’s best hitter. But when that player balked at moving to Calgary, the bats entered the deal.

Laredo offered cash for Odom, but Young said that was “an insult.”

The bat trade wasn’t the first time Calgary came up with some creative dealmaking. The Vipers once tried to acquire a pitcher for 1,500 blue seats when they were renovating their stadium, Young said.

[cferneyh]

It's "What Can We Do To Get Attention" Week for the Calgary Vipers.

Earlier this week they announced that they were going to sign Theo "I Just Can't Stand Being Out of The Spotlight" Fleury to a contract.

[The Horrible Esthete]

Funny!

An aside on these "good" maple bats.... the reason these are so popular these days is that apparently, the wood is a little more dense than ash....and return a tad more energy to the baseball because they compress less upon contact.

However, the amount of broken bats I'm seeing is bordering on ridiculous. While it's true that a pitcher with great control of a good 2-seam fastball, splitter or cutter will break quite a few bats, it seems lots of "average" pitchers are making alot of firewood these days, and it's gotta be that these maple bats, while more dense than ash, are also more brittle.

Next time you're at the ballpark, count the number of broken bats. It use to be a few a game. Now its regularly in the double-digits....

[Gangrel]

And I read an article somewhere saying the shards from a maple bat are a lot more dangerous then the old bats. Perhaps mostly because they break more often, I dunno.

They are worried if someone gets a piece in the neck, they are pretty much a goner.......

I think a shard flew into a dugout at an MLB game not that long ago and almost hit someone.

[robert goulet]

Speaking of good quality maple bats a buddy of mine that I played Senior Mens ball with owns a Baseball Bat company called Mashbats that has been around since 2000 I believe. <!-- w --><a class="postlink" href="http://www.mashbats.com">www.mashbats.com</a><!-- w -->

If you get a chance check out his website and see some of the players that have tried out his sticks...it's very impressive.

And if any of you play in a wooden bat league you should try a few of them out, they are incredible weapons.

[grimes]

Apparently the winner of this trade may be the company that made the bats...

<!-- m --><a class="postlink" href="http://www.thestar.com/Sports/article/432209">http://www.thestar.com/Sports/article/432209</a><!-- m -->
Trade a smash hit for Canadian batmakers
Business booms after minor leaguer traded for ten Prairie Sticks bats

Chris Talbott
Associated Press

Jared Greenberg and Dan Zinger know the Internet has the power to change lives. They just never thought it would change theirs.

The Canadian batmakers were driving home from Minneapolis to Red Deer, Alberta, last Friday when news hit the Net that the Calgary Vipers had traded a minor league pitcher to a Texas team for 10 of their custom maple bats.

"We just kind of blew it off, like, 'OK, we've got to make these 10 bats'," said Greenberg, co-owner of Prairie Sticks Bat Co. "Then all the sudden ... somewhere in the middle of North Dakota, within five minutes, both of our cell phones were blinking and beeping.

"It's been crazy."

News of pitcher John Odom's trade to the Laredo Broncos of the independent United Baseball League, which became necessary when Odom had trouble crossing the border into Canada, was just a few hours old when it began to spread like a virus across the Internet. It moved to television, then even deeper into cyberspace once video became available. And at every turn, the name Prairie Sticks popped up.

The proof was in the PDA when Greenberg and Zinger woke up to resume their trip home.

"All these orders came in between midnight and 5 or 6 a.m. while we were sleeping," Greenberg said.

People from California to Connecticut wanted Prairie Sticks bats.

There have been hundreds of e-mails from friends, family, former teammates and the curious. The news led to a small but immediate bump in sales.

It also came at the right time. Prairie Sticks' owners were in Minnesota last week to put their gear in the hands of big league players.

The company sold 1,500 bats last year. Not bad for a two-man outfit that started seven years ago with a hand lathe and a pile of wood. But the co-owners think there might be more out there.

"It's just been a gradual progression in the number of bats we produce per year," Zinger said. "We're at the point now where this story has broken and we're selling to a lot of independent pro leagues and we're on the verge of picking up our Major League vendor's license."

Prairie Sticks started in a workshop when amateur men's league players in Red Deer had trouble getting maple bats from major manufacturers. Greenberg began turning bats for his teammates and friends "just like you would do in your middle school shop class'' and slowly expanded the business.

Today Prairie Sticks bats are made with the same wood used by the major batmakers and $100,000 worth of equipment, including a hydraulic tracing lathe that can turn out an unfinished bat in 1 1/2 minutes. Add the logo and model number and you're swinging for the fences in under five minutes.

The company offers several models of wood bats in maple, birch and ash. The most popular is the one the Vipers demanded in exchange for Odom – the 34-inch double-dipped black C243. They're made from rock maple grown in eastern Canada.

"Players are after the qualities of maple," Zinger said. "The grains are nice and tight and they don't flake like ash bats. And they're generally quite a bit harder."

Peter Young, Vipers president and chief operating officer, took possession of the bats Tuesday during a news conference in Calgary. He said the bats, which retail at $69 each or $66.50 for six to 11, have been inscribed with the words "John Odom Trade Bat" and numbered. They'll be auctioned off on eBay with the proceeds going to charity.

Like the batmakers, Young was caught by surprise by the intensity of the reaction to the trade.

"It's stupid. We didn't mean it to do this," Young said. "It wasn't like a publicity stunt. It was just supposed to be funny, you know. We put it up on the Golden League Web site exactly the way the trade was listed in the document – 'John Odom for 10 Prairie Sticks double-dipped maple bats, black.' Somebody saw it, then somebody else saw it and the next thing you know ESPN and CNN are calling."

Whether that means Zinger can quit his day job in Alberta's oil and gas industry and join Greenberg as a full-time batmaker is a question the duo has been batting back and forth during their long drives across the high plains.

"I would say it will increase business, but time will tell," Zinger said. "But so far the amount of exposure has just been crazy."

[The Horrible Esthete]

More on maple bats.....

<!-- m --><a class="postlink" href="http://sports.yahoo.com/mlb/news?slug=jp-bats052908&prov=yhoo&type=lgns">http://sports.yahoo.com/mlb/news?slug=j ... &type=lgns</a><!-- m -->

Fan’s injury should force bat policy change
By Jeff Passan, Yahoo! Sports

The wire came out of Susan Rhodes’ mouth this week. Doctors replaced it with rubber bands, so now people can understand her when she tells the story of how a maple baseball bat shattered her jaw.

“Your whole life changes,” Rhodes says over the phone, and she’s not looking for sympathy. Just an explanation as to how Major League Baseball continues to allow maple bats when their danger becomes more obvious by the injurious incident.

First came Pittsburgh Pirates hitting coach Don Long getting sliced along the cheek with the splintered end of a bat that snapped at the handle. Ten days later, on April 25, sitting four rows behind the visitor’s dugout at Dodger Stadium where Long was hit, Rhodes took the barrel end of a flying bat to the left side of her jaw.

What’s next? A fan or player dying?

At the recent owners’ meetings, commissioner Bud Selig highlighted maple bats as one of the game’s most pressing issues. A decade ago, they were barely in baseball. Since Barry Bonds’ record-breaking season, though, more than 50 percent of players have gone from the traditional ash bats to maple, which the converts claim feel harder.

A study commissioned by the league and the players’ union in 2005 showed maple and ash hit the ball equally well. Ash bats tend to crack innocuously, the study found, while maple bats explode, sending huge chunks of wood in every direction. When Todd Helton swung at a 2-1 pitch from Cory Wade in the seventh inning of the Colorado-Los Angeles game Rhodes attended, little did she know the remnants of the bat would reach all the way to her seats.

Rhodes, 50, wasn’t much of a baseball fan. Her friend John Andrews invited her and another friend, Gale Banks, to the game. Rhodes is a single mother of two teenaged boys, works in marketing and lives in the Los Angeles suburb of Sherman Oaks. It would be a nice time out, she figured.

And it was until Helton’s swing. He was borrowing a bat of teammate Troy Tulowitzki. While a Rockies spokesman said Tulowitzki uses both maple and ash, a clubhouse attendant speculated that because of the manner in which the bat snapped, it was almost in all likelihood maple. And a Rawlings spokesman said the last batch of bats made for Tulowitzki was maple.

The bat blew up, and Rhodes’ eyes followed the ball, which landed in center field for a single. Meanwhile, the bat tomahawked toward her.

When Rhodes recovered consciousness, she kept asking Banks what had happened, the concussion robbing her short-term memory.

“All I remember is feeling this complete slam against my face and pain,” Rhodes says. “You know when you’re in such shock, you think, ‘What the hell happened?’ I figured I got hit by a ball. I was very conscious of one flying and thought we aren’t in a very safe area. I don’t know if I was looking at the ball. I can’t remember anything except for the smash and total memory loss.”

Dodgers officials summoned paramedics who took Rhodes to an on-site triage center. Once stabilized, she was offered a ride to a nearby emergency room. Instead, she sought care closer to home, where a CAT scan revealed two jaw fractures, one on the upper-left side, where the bat struck, and the other on the lower right, where the force reverberated.

Once the swelling subsided three days later, Rhodes underwent surgery in which doctors inserted four screws and a titanium plate on the right side. For three weeks, Rhodes barely slept. Once, when her nose was clogged, Rhodes says she started panicking that she couldn’t breathe. Banks brought Rhodes nasal spray for the stuffiness and a Vicodin for the pain.

Since then, it hasn’t improved much. Rhodes subsists on liquid supplements Ensure and Boost and tries to come up with palatable concoctions in the blender. Migraines dig into her skull. Doctors can’t say for certain if she will recover fully.

“I had perfect teeth before,” Rhodes says. “They’ve shifted. My bite is off. The jaw on the left side has atrophied. I don’t have the same energy. I’ve got two kids, and I’m a single mother.

“It’s not easy. You just want to sleep. I don’t go out anymore. I’m exhausted.”

The medical bills have started to come in, and so far, Rhodes says, they’re more than $7,000. She’s not sure how much insurance will cover, so she contacted an attorney, Alan Ghaleb, to inquire about whether the Dodgers would help cover the costs. Ghaleb phoned the team and received a call back from American Specialty Insurance and Risk Services, an Indiana company that offers insurance to professional sports teams. The response shocked him.

“No way, no how, no way would they cover it,” Ghaleb says. “The adjuster was professional, but they would never consider helping anybody with their medical bills. It’s tough luck and you assume the risk.”

There is a reason every team announces before the game that teams are not responsible for flying bats and balls. The same is printed on tickets. Around Dodger Stadium, signs are posted: “Please be alert to bats and balls entering the seating area.” There’s a Spanish translation, too.

Fans who have brought litigation against baseball clubs for injuries due to batted balls and other projectiles have almost universally seen their cases dropped due to the assumption-of-risk doctrine. Every team that sees an injury at its stadium, no matter how serious, fights helping with medical costs because of the implications throughout the rest of the industry.

Ghaleb says that Rhodes is “considering (lawsuits) both against the Dodgers and the manufacturer.” He plans on deciding within 45 days whether cases are worth pursuing, and if he determines they aren’t, he will start a letter-writing campaign to Rawlings and the Dodgers on the dangers of maple bats.

“This is an unfortunate incident, and we wish her a speedy and full recovery,” Dodgers spokesman Josh Rawitch says.

Rhodes worries that the warnings aren’t enough. The issue of maple bats is so new, only the most ardent fans have heard of the danger. She figured a line drive into foul territory was enough of a threat. Now, having researched the Long incident and seen two or three or sometimes more bats per game breaking, Rhodes wonders why the netting that protects fans behind home plate isn’t lengthened to cover the baselines.

“Some child or someone’s parent is going to get killed,” Rhodes says. “I’m very fortunate this is all that happened. If it was just a few inches higher, it would’ve hit my temple or poked my eye out.

“Why wouldn’t they extend (netting)? I don’t get that. Would you like to live or would you like to see the game? If anything comes out of this, I want people to be safe.”

MLB and the union, though derelict in reaching an agreement to this point, want that as well. They will meet in June and go through a number of possible solutions, including netting, thickening the handles on bats so they’re less likely to snap or banning maple bats outright.

“We’re very concerned about this issue,” MLB spokesman Rich Levin says. “We are definitely looking into it. I know the commissioner is very concerned.”

As much as Rhodes appreciates the concern, it can’t return her life before a two-pound wooden club blindsided her. She wonders how a sport can put its players and fans in such precarious positions, prone to assaults with a deadly weapon.

Rhodes won’t find out again anytime soon.

“From now on,” she says, “I’m going to Lakers games.”

[sullivand]

Great stuff on the maple bats. I had no clue. Makes me think the Brett (George) brothers might be positioned nicely their wood composite bats -- assuming they could one day receive full MLB approval:
The Brett Brothers Wood Composite Bat
<!-- m --><a class="postlink" href="http://www.baseballtips.com/stealth.html">http://www.baseballtips.com/stealth.html</a><!-- m -->

[grimes]

Fans who have brought litigation against baseball clubs for injuries due to batted balls and other projectiles have almost universally seen their cases dropped due to the assumption-of-risk doctrine. Every team that sees an injury at its stadium, no matter how serious, fights helping with medical costs because of the implications throughout the rest of the industry.

Well I'm not a lawyer, but I would think that if these bats are breaking more often (and in a more dangerous fashion) than has happened historically in baseball, then she would have a case that this was beyond the "reasonable" risk threshold that would normally apply in such assumption-of-risk situations. Then she could try to show that MLB knew (or reasonably should have known) of the increased risk, and failed to disclose it.

I could see them extending the netting though - that's what hockey did after that girl was killed by a puck in Columbus a few years back.

[The Horrible Esthete]

Fans who have brought litigation against baseball clubs for injuries due to batted balls and other projectiles have almost universally seen their cases dropped due to the assumption-of-risk doctrine. Every team that sees an injury at its stadium, no matter how serious, fights helping with medical costs because of the implications throughout the rest of the industry.

Well I'm not a lawyer, but I would think that if these bats are breaking more often (and in a more dangerous fashion) than has happened historically in baseball, then she would have a case that this was beyond the "reasonable" risk threshold that would normally apply in such assumption-of-risk situations. Then she could try to show that MLB knew (or reasonably should have known) of the increased risk, and failed to disclose it.

I could see them extending the netting though - that's what hockey did after that girl was killed by a puck in Columbus a few years back.

I don't know about a suit....as mentioned in the article, MLB plasters the "ticketholder assumes the risk" clause all over everything -- even tickets themselves. If just one bat could break and possibly cause injury to a fan, then theoretically the risk is such that ANY bat can break and cause injury.

That said, MLB should heavily consider banning the maple bats. It seems like one is busting with every single at-bat. It lengthens the game, disrupts the pitchers' rhythm, and distracts fielders from making plays. You'd think the League would be just as concerned about the safety of players, coaches & umpires as that of the fans, as well as game-flow.

But I absolutely abhor the idea of extending the netting; if the fans occupying the good seats close to the action aren't paying attention with every pitch, then they should sit in the OF or higher tier where they belong -- with the "casual" fans.

[grimes]

I don't know about a suit....as mentioned in the article, MLB plasters the "ticketholder assumes the risk" clause all over everything -- even tickets themselves. If just one bat could break and possibly cause injury to a fan, then theoretically the risk is such that ANY bat can break and cause injury.

That said, MLB should heavily consider banning the maple bats. It seems like one is busting with every single at-bat. It lengthens the game, disrupts the pitchers' rhythm, and distracts fielders from making plays. You'd think the League would be just as concerned about the safety of players, coaches & umpires as that of the fans, as well as game-flow.

But I absolutely abhor the idea of extending the netting; if the fans occupying the good seats close to the action aren't paying attention with every pitch, then they should sit in the OF or higher tier where they belong -- with the "casual" fans.

Those "ticketholder assumes all risk" clauses aren't necessarily as ironclad as one might think. Of course they have to include them though, as without they'd be completely open to litigation in almost any situation. But I agree with you about the netting, hopefully they don't go that route. I used to love sitting at the end of the rink to watch a hockey game, you can see the play develop so much better from that angle. But they ruined it when they put the netting in a few years ago.

[The Horrible Esthete]

Those "ticketholder assumes all risk" clauses aren't necessarily as ironclad as one might think.

It's not that I think they are "ironclad", per se.

I just know that that the above article has it right when it states "fans who have brought litigation against baseball clubs for injuries due to batted balls and other projectiles have almost universally seen their cases dropped due to the assumption-of-risk doctrine."

[d_alex_d]

I'm surprised no buddy brought up this incident from last month.

<!-- m --><a class="postlink" href="http://slam.canoe.ca/Slam/Baseball/MLB/2008/05/22/5639086-ap.html">http://slam.canoe.ca/Slam/Baseball/MLB/ ... 86-ap.html</a><!-- m -->

[sullivand]

MLB should heavily consider banning the maple bats. It seems like one is busting with every single at-bat. It lengthens the game, disrupts the pitchers' rhythm, and distracts fielders from making plays. You'd think the League would be just as concerned about the safety of players, coaches & umpires as that of the fans, as well as game-flow.

Looks like the maple bat issue is back in the news. I just got back from tonight's Royals game -- scary scene in the second inning when this happened...

"Plate umpire Brian O'Nora was taken to the hospital in the second inning after shards from Miguel Olivo's maple bat lacerated his forehead on the same day that Major League Baseball commissioned a study on the dangerous lumber."