MLB to discuss maple-bat safety

0 Comments | USA TODAY, June, 2008 | by Ray Glier

Major League Baseball's Safety and Health Advisory Committee is scheduled to meet today in New York to discuss what many consider is an epidemic of maple bats exploding on contact with the baseball and the barrels becoming dangerous projectiles.

Is maple on its way to becoming extinct from baseball and just another tree in the forest, or are there going to be restrictions on its use?

Everything will be under review by the committee, including putting netting in the stands up and down the base lines, discussing whether players are illegally modifying the weight-length ratios of the bats and whether kiln drying techniques are making the maple bats too light for collisions with baseballs thrown at 90-plus mph.

Patrick Courtney, a spokesperson for MLB,...