Nor could anyone have predicted the controversy it would bring a quarter-century later. As more and more injuries have resulted from the ever-improving technology and as the balance between hitting and pitching in college baseball has become increasingly skewed, Bill Thurston has become consumed by the Great Bat Debate. The longtime Amherst College coach, who also serves as the NCAA's Division I baseball rules editor, is one of the leading authorities on the impact of aluminum bats in the game. For the past several years, Thurston has been on a personal crusade to limit the performance of aluminum bats as a means to protect players and restore the delicate harmony between pitchers and hitters. The switch to aluminum began as a way to save money.
Aluminum bats are lighter with a larger hitting area.
What's more, studies estimate the average bat speed of a college player using aluminum at around 90 mph, with the average wooden-bat speed at around 80 mph. As a result, aluminum bats send balls 15 to 20 percent farther. From Little League to high school to college, debates over the use of metal bats and the unfair advantage it provides hitters have been waged since the beginning. But it wasn't the rash of injuries that first set the wheels in motion toward finding a way to limit bat technology. Credit college baseball's premier event last May as the ignitor of this latest, most heated battle.