Metal vs. Wood Bats

This New York Times story scares the crap out of me, about how metal bats are causing vicious line drives that have killed a few people. In 1990 I was working at Bell Labs and was the third baseman for my softball team. I thought I could handle the hot corner, and did for a couple of years. But one game a vicious line drive went right over the top of my glove and I took it square in the face. I had a broken nose, that eventually required surgery to straighten, but it could have had a lot worse -- broken teeth, broken orbital bones, brain damage, all of that kind of stuff. I was really lucky--the older I get, the luckier I feel I was. A baseball would have been even worse than a softball. I would vote to do away with metal bats in a heartbeat.

Here is what I don't get about human beings:

Scott Kvernum of Williston, N.D., was in the stands at Denton Field as his son’s team played recently against Miles City.

“We’re a home-run-hitting team with metal bats, but with the wood bats we don’t have nearly the same pop,” he said. “It takes a big, strong man to poke one out with a wood bat. That’s why I’d like to see us playing here with metal bats.”

His son, Devin, is a catcher. How would he feel if his son were a pitcher? “With metal bats?” he said. “Oh God, I’d be leery.”

Why is Scott Kvernum so incapable of identifying with the pitchers on his (and other's) team, regardless of whether his son is a pitcher or not? Is he just stupid? Can he not make the abstract association between the life of his son and the life of pitchers? Why can't he figure out that if his son were in danger as a pitcher, then all pitchers are in danger?

Scott Kvernum's stupidity, his lack of an ability to reason, seems responsible for the vast majority of human idiocy, it seems to me. Here human stupidity is summed up perfectly. We are at base just idiotic, selfish, self-interested, narcisistic neanthedals. Go ahead, try to prove me wrong. Just try it.