The California State Senate is considering a bill that would ban the use of aluminum baseball bats in high school athletics in the wake of a serious brain injury suffered by a high school pitcher last March.

Gunnar Sandberg, a 16-year-old pitcher at Marin Catholic High School, was critically injured after being hit by a line drive in March. He spent three weeks in a coma with a life-threatening brain injury and required surgery to remove part of his skull to relive pressure on his brain.

Remarkably, he has made great strides since the injury, recently making an appearance on the mound at Oakland Coliseum to throw out the ceremonial first pitch of a game between the A's and the Giants.

The incident has reignited a debate about the use of aluminum or composite baseball bats that has been going on for more than a decade. Proponents of the ban on aluminum bats point to incidents like Gunnar Sandberg's ordeal to argue that the bats make an already dangerous activity, more dangerous.

Baseball bats made with aluminum or other composite materials generally help hitters produce more speed and power in a couple of ways. Aluminum bats are generally lighter than wooden bats, and consequently, allow a hitter to swing the bat faster and produce more power. Aluminum bats also compress slightly when making contact with a baseball and then spring the ball off the bat. This so called "trampoline effect" can make a baseball travel much faster than it would off a wooden bat.

Opponents of the proposed ban counter saying that wooden baseball bats are also dangerous and can produce the same sort of line drives that would injure pitchers.

If the ban were to pass the legislature, it would ban the use of "nonwooden" bats through 2011. In 2012, the legislature would have to extend the ban or let it lapse. In the meantime, the plan is to conduct further research on the matter to determine if aluminum bats really are unreasonably dangerous to high school athletes.


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