Broken bat incident at Fenway should trigger investigation into ballpark safety

When Brett Lawrie's shattered maple bat flew into the second row at Fenway Park Friday night, it nearly took the life of Tonya Carpenter, a 44-year old resident of Paxton, MA, who attended the game with her 8-year old son.

In the aftermath of the near tragedy, questions arose about increasing protective netting to shield fans sitting closest to the field. There were also questions about the types of wood Major League players' bats are made of.

Lawrie's bat was maple. For most of the 20th century hitters preferred ash bats. Then in 2001 a maple bat in the hands of Barry Bonds was smashing baseballs and records. Since then, more and more players have opted for maple.

Maple bats may be better for hitting homeruns, but they're also more likely to shatter. When the insides of ash bats crack, hitters can feel it and see the wood starting to flake, so they can discard the bat before a pitched ball smashes it to pieces. Cracks in maple bats are more difficult to discover. Hitters don't realize that they're swinging a bat that has already cracked inside. Then ball hits bat, and bat explodes.

In short, ash bats crack, maple bats shatter. Broken ash bats get tossed aside whereas maple bats spray shrapnel around the field, and sometimes into the stands.

I'm not going to jump to a conclusion and blame the bat just because of some anecdotal evidence I've read. However, it is up to Major League Baseball to look into this with intense scrutiny, and if they find that a certain type of wood is a problem, take swift and decisive action. MLB investigated bats breaking in 2008, and took some measures to reduce broken bats. However, maple bats are still commonly used by hitters. And shattered bats are not uncommon occurrences.

The onus is on Major League Baseball to investigate this incident and all the questions it has raised, from bats to nets. And if maple bats are proven more likely to shatter, they should be banned. Period. No discussion, no debate, no typical "that's just baseball" reluctance to change. Brett Lawrie has already concluded his maple bat isn't a problem:

"I really don’t feel like it's necessary to change bats or anything like that. It's just one of those things that's part of baseball and unfortunately, everything is so close behind there and there's limited netting."

Major League Baseball needs to be more scientific and thorough than Lawrie was. If the NFL can spend $5 million to investigate the air pressure of footballs, MLB can spend some time and money to figure out if the game is as safe for fans and players as it can be.

Frankly, scrutinizing fan and player safety should always be a priority. It shouldn't take something like this to be an impetus to make the ballpark as safe as it can be to watch or play a game.

Thankfully the response of Fenway Park's medical personnel was rapid and pro-active. Thankfully ambulances at Fenway are stationed near canvas alley, which makes it easy to transport patients from the field. Thankfully those ambulances have quick access to the street (as we saw in the climactic shootout scenes of The Town). Thankfully Fenway is close to hospitals which have some of the best doctors in the world (Beth Israel Deaconess is less than a mile away). Thankfully Tonya Carpenter now has a good chance to recover.

Photo Credit: Charles Krupa/AP Photo

Just Put Barry Bonds and Roger Clemens in the Hall of Fame

I don't like Barry Bonds. I don't like Roger Clemens. I hate both of them and think the tremendous success they had in the late stages of their career was due to their PED usage. I also think they're both jerks. I enjoy seeing bad things happen to them.

However, they belong in the Hall of Fame. And the BBWAA has no right to act as self appointed avengers, bringing baseball "criminals" like Clemens and Bonds to justice for their sins. The BBWAA has no right. Because the BBWAA were silent partners in the PED era dominated by Bonds and Clemens.

Countless players were shooting up and cycling right under the noses of the BBWAA. Arm muscles grew to the sizes of leg muscles. Players recovered from injury at an inhuman pace. And the writers did next to nothing to investigate the real cause. These miracles were attributed to wondrous advances in sports medicine and training technology. The BBWAA made no effort to investigate the effects of PEDs, and then look for those effects being displayed by players. "You still have to hit the ball," was a common dismissal of the theoretical impact PEDs could have.

And even after baseball admitted it had a PED problem, moral indignation and outrage was selective. Writers and fans in Boston, for instance, were quick to attack New York players who were listed as PED users. Myself included. Those same writers and fans were just as quick to forgive and embrace David Ortiz. And we didn't question Manny Ramirez's production in Boston until he wasn't in Boston anymore.

Then there were the San Francisco "journalists" and fans who vehemently defended Barry Bonds to the bitter end. Bonds was portrayed as a victim of being disliked, a victim of reputation, a victim of envy, even a victim of racism.

Most of us wanted asterisks added to records and achievements. In retrospect the entire era deserves an asterisk, not just a few players. And how come there are no movements to add asterisks to known spitball pitchers, or those who stole signs? Red Sox fans who wanted Bonds' records stigmatized with an asterisk don't request that the same be done to the 2004 World Series, or to series MVP Manny Ramirez.

In hindsight, it would be dumb for a player NOT to take PEDs during that era. There were no consequences. The sports media and BBWAA weren't putting any serious effort into questioning the gargantuan numbers and muscles of the era. The League ignored the issue, the Players Association denied it, the teams paid for it, we the fans LOVED it. The writers also gained financially as the game's popularity boomed because of the homerun explosion.

And now we want to punish a few players for what many/most did? Who are we to judge when we loved the product? Who are the BBWAA to determine the right and wrong of something they went out of their way to avoid discovering? The biggest sports story in decades was happening right in front of them and it took years and a Congressional investigation to unearth it? What right do the BBWAA have to judge an era's morality when they were part of it?

The Baseball Hall of Fame isn't a Hall of Morality. Just look at Ty Cobb, or the violent and overindulgent Babe Ruth, or the racist Tom Yawkey. How many other morally repugnant men have been enshrined? How many cheaters? What about admitted spitballer Gaylord Perry? If the BBWAA wants the Hall to be clean, they should start with the garbage inside before focusing on the garbage outside.

Removing morality from the equation, you can only assess players by comparing them to their peers who played in the same era. You can't, for instance, compare Rogers Hornsby's 301 career homeruns to Craig Biggio's 291 and say that they're comparable. But you can compare Biggio to players who played at the same time. So if we're comparing Roger Clemens and Barry Bonds within the context of the era in which they played, they were still the best. Bonds was the best hitter of the PED era. Clemens was one of the best pitchers. There's no arguing that.

The BBWAA wants to clean something that stained the game of baseball. But the BBWAA themselves are also stained. That entire era is. It's over. It happened. The BBWAA did its part to allow it to happen. It can't be reversed or righted. Certainly not by a bunch of holier-than-thou sportswriters who enjoyed the ride and profited from baseball's return to popularity. All that can be done now is to compare the players who played in that time, choose the best ones, and send them to Cooperstown.

The BBWAA failed to do its job back when Bonds and Clemens were playing. In an illogical response to that, they've assumed even more responsibilities. They've made themselves into judge, jury, and executioner of baseball sinners. And they don't have the right or the capability to fulfill that role. They should just vote for the best players.

BBWAA Covers PED Story 15 Years Late

Firstly, how stupid is it to have an envelope-opening-ceremony when you know the envelope is empty? That was baseball at its most baseballiness yesterday. Just have a press conference and be done with it.

Now to the meat of the discussion. No player was voted into the Hall of Fame by the pompous BBWAA (Baseball Writers' Association of America). A slugger with 762 HRs, 514 steals, and 7 MVPs received 36.2% of the vote. A pitcher with 354 wins and 7 Cy Youngs received only 38.8% Why? Because of PEDs.

I hate Barry Bonds. And I can't wait to DVR Roger Clemens's funeral so I can watch it again and again, and have a chuckle anytime I want. But these guys were never caught, never convicted, and they were damn good players even before the likely start of their PED cycles. Bonds won the MVP 3 times from 1990 to 1993. Clemens won 3 of his Cy Youngs in Boston.

But no, in this issue full of grey area and complex questions, the BBWAA has taken a simple black and white stance. Suspicion=guilt. Even being surrounded by suspicious players means you're guilty. However the BBWAA isn't looking for justice. They simply want to punish the players who threatened the illusion that baseball is something special, something pure. This is about vengeance.

Documentarian Ken Burns made some remarks that clearly demonstrate the punitive attitudes of those who voted against Bonds and Clemens:

"We know some pitchers extended their playing careers, we know some people hit the ball farther... those motherfuckers should suffer for a while."

Yes, Ken Burns actually said that.

Suffer? Motherfuckers? These sound like the words of someone being interviewed outside a Court House, after some thugs were convicted of murdering his children. I can picture Samuel L. Jackson saying this, not Ken Burns.

He and the BBWAA have no right to mount such high horses. They were all complicit in the steroid era, particularly the BBWAA. The writers, whose job it is to find stories and write about them, somehow missed the biggest story in sports for well over a decade. They followed every movement of Mark McGwire and Sammy Sosa, and later Barry Bonds, and yet found nothing suspicious? They did no digging, they didn't look for anything to make Big Mac and Sosa look bad.

And when people did speculate or point out the rapid increase in homeruns, they were dismissed as cynics. And then writers talked about how tightly wound the ball was, and how that was making them fly out of the park at absurd rates. And the reason biceps were bursting was due to modern weight-training techniques and protein shakes. Every theory except for illegal PEDs was used to explain the ridiculous amount of homeruns being hit.

The BBWAA was willfully negligent, and they missed the story. Now, since they couldn't punish these players with words, they're punishing them with votes.

Well it's too late. What's done is done. You let this happen. So did the owners, so did MLB, so did the MLBPA, so did the fans. We all let this happen, and we enjoyed it. And it can't be erased. Just like segregation can't be erased. Or the reserve-clause era before free agency. Or the cocaine-era.

A friend of mine pointed out that the Hall of Fame is primarily a museum of the game's history. The writers want to rewrite the history (which they initially did not write about), and that's just wrong. The BBWAA should vote for people they don't like, vote for sluggers with muscles throbbing with HGH, vote for pitchers who extended their careers. It might hurt the BBWAA to do so, but to quote Ken Burns, those motherfuckers should suffer for a while.

Why Bonds, Clemens, and Even Sosa Should Be Inducted Into the Hall of Fame

I don't like Sammy Sosa, I hate Barry Bonds, and I will laugh the day Roger Clemens dies. But all three of these PED assisted freaks should be inducted into the Baseball Hall of Fame. Because baseball can't pretend that the steroid era didn't exist, nor can it act morally superior to something that it participated in and benefited from.

The Hall of Fame is baseball's last bastion of the illusion that it is, or ever was, a pure game. That's why some are so adamantly against admitting the likes of Bonds, Clemens, and Sosa.

These so-called purists aren't defending the game, or the Hall. They're defending their own delusions. They're in denial. They think that impurity is something new to the game.

The game has always had dirty aspects to it. It was white-only until 1947. Players didn't have basic labor rights until free agency. Cocaine and amphetamines were an everyday part of the sport in the 1970s.

And the Hall of Fame has already been infiltrated by filth. Ty Cobb is in the Hall, despite the fact that he was a bigot, once beat up a crippled man, probably fixed games, and probably killed at least one person. White Sox owner Charles Comiskey is in the Hall of Fame and he was so cheap that he made his players pay to launder their uniforms. Those players eventually threw the 1919 World Series. Red Sox owner Tom Yawkey is in the Hall of Fame despite running a racist organization that was offered and declined a chance to sign Negro Leaguer Willie Mays. The Red Sox didn't integrate until 1959, 12 years after Jackie Robinson broke the color barrier.

Baseball cannot move forward from the steroid era until it acknowledges that it occurred and is a part of the game's history. The purists who don't want to see Barry Bonds's HGH swollen head on a bronze plaque are desperate to avoid admitting that their sacred game isn't as chaste and innocent as they proclaim it to be.

And these BBWA purists were the same sportswriters who failed to unearth and expose the wide-scale cheating they are now so vehemently against. These writers saw Barry Bonds's skull grow, they saw Sosa and Mark McGwire's inhuman biceps that were as big as most men's thighs, and all these writers could do was applaud. They buzzed with excitement during the homerun race between Sosa and McGwire. They marveled at the shape Roger Clemens was in despite his age. They theorized about Alex Rodriguez hitting 800 homeruns. They even explained the explosion in offense with juiced balls and smaller ballparks.

Now they're rallying against the same players whose PED aided deeds they filled their sports pages with. These hypocrites shouldn't be the ones who know prevent Bonds, Clemens, and Sosa from being inducted.

So let the freaks in. There are segregationist owners in the Hall so why not PED assisted players?