Suburban teen, coaches testify in Chicago hearing to ban metal bats

First foie gras, now metal baseball bats.

Yet this time, the Chicago City Council might have a point in banning a widely accepted specialty product, as attested by a couple of Barrington residents who spoke at a public committee hearing downtown at City Hall Wednesday.

"I'm here to represent all the people who have been affected by metal bats," said Tony Russo, a 16-year-old sophomore at Carmel Catholic High School in Mundelein. "My face was shattered by a ball off a metal-alloy bat."

A slight teen with a classic pitcher's build, Russo had his nose and cheekbones broken by a line drive in a Barrington Youth Baseball game two years ago this spring. It's taken two rounds of plastic surgery to return him to good health. "I consider myself lucky to be able to stand before you and talk," he said.

He testified with calm composure before a joint hearing of the Education and Parks & Recreation committees, stating that to his mind there was a clear difference in the pace and force of a batted ball off a metal bat compared with a traditional wooden bat, and that even with restrictions on how juiced those bats can be, there is no enforcement to keep dangerous bats out of games.

"Please, please pass this ordinance," he said, "so we can return to baseball the way it was meant to be played."

He and other supporters of the ban clearly hoped that a Chicago ban could lead to an expanded movement affecting other communities. Chicago's proposed ordinance, sponsored by Alderman Robert Fioretti, is modeled on a New York City ban on the use of metal bats in high-school games - passed two years ago and which went into effect last year after surviving a court challenge - but would extend it to all competitive games of organized baseball within the city limits for players age 8 to 18.

Barrington's Marc Brignola, director of the Sports Academy-Northwest and its Student Athlete Foundation in Buffalo Grove, also testified in support of the ban. "My belief is today's metal-composite bats are simply wood bats on steroids," he said. "They have no other purpose than to help young players add bat speed and power to their hits. From what I have seen as a coach and baseball director, like steroids, the performance-enhancing characteristics are similar with today's metal bats.

"I applaud you all for taking this proposal seriously," he added. "You have the unique opportunity to lead by example. Your decision has the potential to accelerate the debate and encourage more communities and leagues to take the bold move to take a stand against performance-enhancing equipment and return youth baseball to better days."

Yet it's no cut-and-dried, one, two, three strikes you're out debate, as supporters of metal bats - a group Fioretti dismissed as "the metal-bat cartel" - testified there is no hard data showing that metal bats are more dangerous than wooden bats. The supporters ranged from sporting-goods companies to Little League International President and CEO Stephen Keener, who said legislators should not be swayed by "emotional" and "anecdotal" information. Chicago Public Schools Director of Sports Administration Calvin Davis added that the cost of replacing wooden bats would be four times what schools pay for metal bats.

"It would cause a hardship on our already resource-challenged schools," he said.

Palatine's Jerry Balcer, brother of Chicago Alderman James Balcer, also testified on the lack of statistical proof. "I at one time actually supported banning metal bats," he said.

Yet his own examination of studies on the Internet, and experiments having his travel team for 14-year-olds play with wooden bats, made him question it.

"We saw that there was no difference between the exiting speed," he said. "Everything I looked at, every study, completely switched my way of thinking."

The joint committee couldn't arrive at a conclusion whether to kill the measure or pass it on to the city council, and the ordinance was tabled for more study. Yet those in favor of the ordinance were clearly hoping that Chicago joins New York City in starting a nationwide movement to ban metal bats. Russo said there has been no formal measure proposed in Barrington, but that the Pony League-level division he played in for young teens now uses wooden bats.

"If Chicago were to pass this, it would make it easier for other villages around Chicago to do the exact same," Russo said afterward. "I wanted to let my story be known, especially in front of all the aldermen, so they'd take it into consideration in voting. It's been very important to me, and it was quite an ordeal, so I would really feel better if nobody ever had to go through that again."

Russo also handled the media scrutiny like a big-leaguer.

Asked if he'd attempted a pitching comeback, he said, "I tried it again, but it was different. You kind of relive it when you get back on the mound."

He quit playing soon into a fall league just over a year ago. One tactful TV reporter asked if it was like post-traumatic stress disorder.

"It wasn't that debilitating," Russo said with a smile. "At this point, I know the risks, and having that knowledge changes it."

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