Sports

During the most recent owner’s meetings Bud Selig – commissioner – brought up the issue of maple bats and the danger that they pose to both fans and players. More then a decade ago maple bats were hardly in use and many players didn’t even think to use them. It wasn’t until Barry Bond used a maple bat and earned for himself a record breaking season. Now more than 50% of the players are ditching the traditional bats and switching to maple bats.

A study commissioned by the league and the players’ union in 2005 showed maple and ash hit the ball equally well. Ash bats tend to crack innocuously, the study found, while maple bats explode, sending huge chunks of wood in every direction. When Todd Helton swung at a 2-1 pitch from Cory Wade in the seventh inning of the Colorado-Los Angeles game Rhodes attended, little did she know the remnants of the bat would reach all the way to her seats.

Rhodes, 50, wasn’t much of a baseball fan. Her friend John Andrews invited her and another friend, Gale Banks, to the game. Rhodes is a single mother of two teenage boys, works in marketing and lives in the Los Angeles suburb of Sherman Oaks. It would be a nice time out, she figured.

And it was until Helton’s swing. He was borrowing a bat of teammate Troy Tulowitzki. While a Rockies spokesman said Tulowitzki uses both maple and ash, a clubhouse attendant speculated that because of the manner in which the bat snapped, it was almost in all likelihood maple. And a Rawlings spokesman said the last batch of bats made for Tulowitzki was maple.

The bat blew up, and Rhodes’ eyes followed the ball, which landed in center field for a single. Meanwhile, the bat tomahawked toward her. When Rhodes recovered consciousness, she kept asking Banks what had happened, the concussion robbing her short-term memory.

“All I remember is feeling this complete slam against my face and pain,” Rhodes says. “You know when you’re in such shock, you think, ‘What the hell happened?’ I figured I got hit by a ball. I was very conscious of one flying and thought we aren’t in a very safe area. I don’t know if I was looking at the ball. I can’t remember anything except for the smash and total memory loss.”

Dodgers officials summoned paramedics who took Rhodes to an on-site triage center. Once stabilized, she was offered a ride to a nearby emergency room. Instead, she sought care closer to home, where a CAT scan revealed two jaw fractures, one on the upper-left side, where the bat struck, and the other on the lower right, where the force reverberated.

Once the swelling subsided three days later, Rhodes underwent surgery in which doctors inserted four screws and a titanium plate on the right side. For three weeks, Rhodes barely slept. Since then, it hasn’t improved much. Rhodes subsists on liquid supplements Ensure and Boost and tries to come up with palatable concoctions in the blender. Migraines dig into her skull. Doctors can’t say for certain if she will recover fully.

“I had perfect teeth before,” Rhodes says. “They’ve shifted. My bite is off. The jaw on the left side has atrophied. I don’t have the same energy. I’ve got two kids, and I’m a single mother. “It’s not easy. You just want to sleep. I don’t go out anymore. I’m exhausted.”

The medical bills have started to come in, and so far, Rhodes says, they’re more than $7,000. She’s not sure how much insurance will cover, so she contacted an attorney, Alan Ghaleb, to inquire about whether the Dodgers would help cover the costs. Ghaleb phoned the team and received a call back from American Specialty Insurance and Risk Services, an Indiana company that offers insurance to professional sports teams. The response shocked him.

“No way, no how, no way would they cover it,” Ghaleb says. “The adjuster was professional, but they would never consider helping anybody with their medical bills. It’s tough luck and you assume the risk.” There is a reason every team announces before the game that teams are not responsible for flying bats and balls. The same is printed on tickets. Around Dodger Stadium, signs are posted: “Please be alert to bats and balls entering the seating area.” There’s a Spanish translation, too.

Fans who have brought litigation against baseball clubs for injuries due to batted balls and other projectiles have almost universally seen their cases dropped due to the assumption-of-risk doctrine. Every team that sees an injury at its stadium, no matter how serious, fights helping with medical costs because of the implications throughout the rest of the industry.

Ghaleb says that Rhodes is “considering (lawsuits) both against the Dodgers and the manufacturer.” He plans on deciding within 45 days whether cases are worth pursuing, and if he determines they aren’t, he will start a letter-writing campaign to Rawlings and the Dodgers on the dangers of maple bats.