Submitted by Dwight Raiford, Apr 26, 2007 16:34

NYC City Council recently spent an enormous amount of time and energy to ban metal bats in high school play in New York City. What's so amazing to me is the virtually no members seemed to influenced by the facts, but rather a strange cronyism to placate a minority council member who has not passed one meaningful bill in his two terms in office. So they give him the bat ban.

I am amazed that the City Council could spend so much time, energy and taxpayer money on this issue. The city faces enormous problems in housing, education, health care, clean air and job creation, yet the council chose to take a stand on bats.

Council members could cite no scientific facts to support their contention that metal bats pose an unnecessary risk of injury than wood bats. They could cite none, because there are none. All of the evidence to date points to the opposite conclusion. But our elected officials chose not to be concerned with facts. They based their opinions on two anecdotal incidents where players were hurt by balls hit off non-wood bats. There was no evidence that those two youngsters would have not been injured had they used wood bats. None. In fact the legislators would not be swayed from their herd mentality by evidence from Little League Baseball that noted that since 1963 there have been eight fatalities from batted balls. Six of those were off wood bats; two were off metal bats.

No one likes to see anyone hurt, especially kids. However, no one should want to see the people we elect to look after our interest to focus on the trivial with such uninformed zeal, yet not focus on real issues that affect millions of us every day.

It is a certainty that there will be a lawsuit against the city and the council is posturing to fight it. Get this - they will fight a lawsuit that they caused with no facts. They used taxpayer money and time to create this legislation which benefits no one. Now they will use taxpayer money to defenc their actions. So who loses? We, the citizens of New York lose.,

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