As fans of the national pastime gear up for another opening day, a change has been seen at sporting goods stores all over the U.S. as new baseball bats carry warning stickers advising that they may be dangerous if misused.
The new warning, required by the Consumer Products Safety Commission, reads: “Caution: This product is only designed for hitting baseballs. Misuse of this product as a weapon may violate local, state and federal law, and may lead to serious injury or death.”
Curiously, it was the bat makers themselves who asked for the warning requirement. “These bat makers are scared [to the point of defecation] by the lawsuits against tobacco companies and gun makers,” says one local attorney. “They think that a warning label will protect them from lawsuits. They’re covering their [buttocks] big-time.”
Statistics on how many people in a given year are killed or injured by baseball bats used as weapons are hard to come by; injuries from bats are usually lumped in the catchall category “blunt-force trauma.” But anecdotally, they figure in a fair number of homicides and assaults, experts say.
“Yeah, we see a fair number of people beat up and even killed with bats,” says a Metro homicide detective. “It’s not the biggest problem in the city, but it happens. I don’t think a warning label is going to do much about it, though.”
“Once a customer has bought the bat, they can simply peel the warning off,” says a spokesperson for Hillerich and Bradsby, the maker of Louisville Sluggers. “But we felt like it was a good idea for the purchaser to be told in explicit terms that our products are to be used for fun and sport, not to hurt other people. That’s just common sense.”
A spokesman for the National Bat Association denounced the new warning stickers. “This could be the first step on the slippery slope to bat control, and I don’t mean the kind achieved by choking up with two strikes.”
(The Fabricator is satire. Don’t believe everything you read.)
A spokesman for the National Bat Association denounced the new warning stickers. “This could be the first step on the slippery slope to bat control, and I don’t mean the kind achieved by choking up with two strikes.”
(The Fabricator is satire. Don’t believe everything you read.)
