• 18
  • August
    2010

When Mets second baseman Luis Castillo cracked a fly ball in the seventh inning against the Atlanta Braves, James Falzon turned, along with thousands of other fans, to watch the ball. Moments later, Falzon's face was literally smashed in by the splintered shards of Castillo's bat.

With his face bleeding profusely, Falzon was rushed to the hospital. Once doctors were able to clean the blood away, they discovered that Falzon had suffered a broken nose, as well as a shattered eye socket.

To this day, he has the scars to show for it, as well as permanent metal pins and plates that were attached the damaged bones.

That happened in August of 2007, and earlier this month, Falzon filed a personal injury lawsuit in Manhattan Supreme Court.

His lawsuit names Castillo, Ramon Castro, who owned the bat, Major League Baseball and bat-maker Rawlings as the responsible parties.

The bat Castillo used that day was constructed with maple wood, rather than the more commonly used ash. As Dareh Gregorian points out in the New York Post, such bats increased in popularity following Barry Bonds' affinity for them during his homerun chase.

The problem with maple is that it is much more liable to shatter, sending wooden projectiles into the field and stands. In many ways, Falzon is lucky to have only escaped with broken bones. Of course, even that would have been less likely if Castillo had been using a safer ash bat.

While ash bats can crack, they are far less likely than maple to completely explode.

Following the incident, Major League Baseball began to monitor bat quality more closely. As Falzon seems to ask in his lawsuit, though, why didn't this happen sooner?

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