James Oddo's Odd Obsession (By Guest Blogger Tom Elliott)

An Alarming News Exclusive!

The New York City Council is a body rarely accused of legislative modesty. The "problems" it seeks to fix range from the serious (Sudan, Iraq) to the minute (dogs from being tied up too long, bad words). Staten Island "Republican" James Oddo has for years tried banning metal composite baseball bats from city leagues. Last week, Mayor Bloomberg vetoed a bill banning their use in city high-school leagues, saying the science wasn't there.

It appears that even Oddo realizes this. The following are a series of e-mails between Oddo's chief of staff, Steven Matteo, and the author of the one study the city councilman believed provided his campaign its scientific ballast. (emphasis mine)

From: St[redacted]
Sent: Tuesday, October 17, 2006 4:43 PM
To: rg[redacted]
Subject: (no subject)

Mr. Greenwald:

My name is Steven Matteo and I am the Chief of Staff for NYC Council Member James S. Oddo. I am writing you because the Youth Services Committee of the NYC Council will be holding a hearing on a bill to ban all aluminum bats in high school play (in NYC). The hearing is scheduled for next Monday, October 23, 2006.

While the bill only applies to the high school level, the bat manufacturers may be on the ropes. We feel we are finally poised to enact this legislation into law (more than 4 years after the first hearing on the bill).

While I apologize for the late notice, I am hopeful that you are able to lend a hand to the hearing, through live testimony or submitted written testimony. We are currently in need of scientific information that states that aluminum bats outperform wood bats. The bat manufacturers in attendance at this hearing will say aluminum bats perform just the same as wood and there is no data that proves these bats are dangerous, outperform wood or have led to injury.

We are very much aware of the study you conducted in 2002 that stated that aluminum bats produced faster batted ball speeds in part due to faster swings and greater elastic properties found in nearly all the aluminum bats. We think it would be beneficial to explain that data at the hearing.

I know I am contacting you at the last minute, but one of our lead witnesses no longer can attend and we feel we are at a disadvantage. I also know this is much to ask, but if at all possible, we would love to have you or a colleague attend the hearing or submit testimony.

Thank you for your assistance, cooperation and consideration.

If you would like to discuss in further detail, please call me at anytime at (917) [redacted].

Regards and be well.

Steven Matteo
Chief of Staff
Office of Council Member James S. Oddo
(718) 980-1017

Dr. Greenwald's response:

From: Rick Greenwald [redacted]
Sent: Friday, October 27, 2006 1:50 PM
To: [redacted]
Subject: RE: (no subject)

Steven,

My apologies for not being able to attend or provide info for this meeting. I am curious about the outcome, however. I think the information I would have provided may not have been exactly what you might have hoped for. Here's the short version:

1) Our published research did show that some, but not all, aluminum bats tested did outperform wood bats in terms of batted ball speed.

2) However, I think in your email below, you mix the notion of increased batted ball speed (a metric of performance) with safety. This is a significant concern for me. I am not aware of any published peer-reviewed scientific data that supports the notion that there has been an increase in injuries related to being struck by a batted ball in baseball or softball at any level of play due to increased batted ball speed or bat performance. Baseball and softball appear to have remained at the very low end of the injury incidence lists.

3) I have stated publicly that the notion of limiting the use of bats to wood only is reasonable if a governing body wants to control some aspects of the game such as run production or game time based on the fact that non-wood bats often outperform wood bats. However, I would oppose any statement that linked such a limitation on using non-wood bats to injury, simply because there are no scientific data to support this contention. This is an important and overlooked point - I urge Councilman Oddo to consider this as you move forward.

I would welcome quality scientific research that quantified these issues, and if there were such a peer-reviewed scientific study, I would be interested in presenting it to the industry as part of my role as Chairman of the ASTM Subcommittee F08.26 on Baseball and Softball.

Are there Council meeting minutes available for this topic? I'd be happy to work with you and Councilman Oddo in the future - if it meets your needs.

Please contact me if you have any questions.

Regards
Rick Greenwald,Phd

Frustrated, Greenwald then e-mailed an Easton Sports rep who he knew would be speaking at the hearing:

-----Original Message-----
From: Rick Greenwald [redacted]
To: 'Dewey Chauvin - EVN' [redacted]
Sent: Sun Mar 11 06:11:43 2007
Subject: NYC Council Rule on Baseball Bats

Dewey,

I appreciate the information you forwarded to me regarding the proposed rule in NYC for not allowing non-wood bats for competitive baseball. I am sorry that I will not be able to attend the New York City Council Youth Services Committee meeting regarding Proposed Int. No. 341-A next Monday, but I hope you can forward this email to Councilman Oddo and Steven Matteo on my behalf.

Below you will find the information I sent Mr. Matteo via email in late October [the e-mail above]. Based on the wording of the proposal that has been put forth, it does not appear that this information either got to the Council or they did not accept it. Particularly disturbing is the fact that the Council has concluded that the use of non-wood bats poses an unacceptable risk to children, particularly high school competitive players. I remain unaware of any scientific data to support this notion, and although I respect their right to determine a level of acceptable risk, I think it should be supported by the data rather than by opinion.

If you refer to Mr. Matteo’s email of October 17th below [above], it appears that Mr. Matteo clearly did not understand the data the was presented in the Frozen Ropes study that Trey Crisco and I performed and published back in the later 1990’s, and that he hoped to use the data to link the concept of bat performance with safety. While it is true that some of the metal bats used in the Frozen Ropes study did outperform wood bats, I do not believe that any of those bats would qualify under today’s NCAA BESR test. Importantly, it should be noted that there were hits with wooden bats that were within the highest batted ball speeds as well. I don’t argue that those metal bats outperformed wood bats, but the relationship between field performance of today’s wood bats and non-wood bats using laboratory tests with batted ball speed or BESR as a metric is not clear – no one has done the study.

The bats used in the Frozen Ropes study pre-date the establishment of the BESR standard and may not meet today’s performance limits for a given governing body such as the NYC Council. Therefore the bats used in this study do not tell you how today’s bats perform relative to wood – recall that several of the bats tested were of larger diameter and higher weight/length differential (-5) than are typically allowed today. The -3 bat tested actually performed quite similarly to wood bats.

One important aspect of that study was to demonstrate that laboratory data collected using ASTM standard test methods would effectively rank order the performance of bats compared to actual performance in the field. We were careful to state that the results from the study could not be extrapolated to all non-wood bats, or that all non-wood bats would outperform wood bats. And we were specific that these results did not imply or relate to any safety issue that we were aware of in baseball – there were and, to my knowledge, are no published data that support that notion.

I understand that the Council is relying on computer modeling work performed by Dr. Rochelle Nicholl. I would caution that the results of this theoretical model should be validated with appropriate field data – and I am not aware that this has been done. If the model values significantly overpredict batted ball speeds noted compared to actual measurements taken from a player (and in this case with a bat model (BE811 bat,2.75” diameter and -4 which is not compliant with today’s BESR rules), then one has to question the overall predictive capability of that model. I am not attempting to review or critique this specific report – only to caution on the use of theoretical data.

I do not know the motivation behind the Council’s proposed rule change. As Chairman of the ASTM subcommittee F08.26 on baseball and softball equipment, I can state that today’s test methods were developed to allow for quantifying the performance of baseball bats, and that the Frozen Ropes study demonstrated that laboratory tests were able to reasonably characterize bat performance in the field. There has been no data presented to the subcommittee that would suggest that there is a safety limit that can be represented by a BESR or batted ball speed test.

I personally do not understand the Council’s position that non-wood bats pose an unacceptable risk to children, but I caveat that because I do not know what information they have reviewed. I have no data to support an increased risk of number of impacts or of any specific increase in injury mechanism or injury severity that is linked causally to non-wood bats. I allow my children to participate in Little League baseball with non-wood bats. What is the unacceptable risk that this new rule is addressing?

I hope that the Council can make an informed decision based on scientific evidence – I hope that the information in this email helps to ensure that facts regarding the Frozen Ropes study are not misinterpreted by the Council.

I look forward to hearing the outcome of the Council’s meeting – thank you in advance for sharing this with the Council.

Regards

Rick Greenwald, PhD