NEW YORK - Commissioner Bud Selig today announced that as a result of a string of injuries resulting from shattered bats made from maple culminating in an injury to a plate umpire at yesterday's Royals/Rockies game, MLB will be switching to maple baseball effective immediately.
"Based on recent events, we wanted to react quickly to ensure the safety of our players and umpire," said Selig. "However, because of the collective bargaining agreement with the Players' Union, we cannot ban maple bats, so we've decided to do the next best thing."
Selig said that despite MLB having done no testing, he believed switching to maple balls would solve the problem.
"I mean, obviously these maple bats are breaking because they aren't as strong and sturdy as the baseballs they are hitting," said Selig. "The answer, then, is to make sure that what the bat is striking has the same basic density as the bat itself. If we make the balls out of maple, we accomplish that."
Selig said he had asked Rawlings to immediately switch production from the traditional leather, twine and cork baseballs to the new, all-wood models. According to Selig, Rawlings has told him that they would only be able to accomplish this so quickly by using a production plant in India.
"Rawlings has told be that they would be able to start sending me the new "Cricket" line of baseballs almost immediately," said Selig. "I don't know how they were able to have these ready to go so quickly, but thank God that they did."
Players were mixed in their reaction to the announcement. The vast majority of pitchers were "shocked and appalled" at the decision.
"These balls, they're like 1/3rd of the weight of a real baseball," said reigning Cy Young MVP Jake Peavy, "and they don't have seams on them. How the hell am I supposed to do anything but lob a meatball over the plate that's going to get hit 600 feet with this thing?"
Not all pitchers were as negative. Former Cy Young winner Barry Zito said that the new ball would "even" the playing field between himself and other pitchers with "stuff", "location" and "velocity".
If this failed to fix the problem, Selig said, MLB has already contacted Wiffle Inc. as a Plan B.
