Broken Baseball Bats: A Harvard (Statistician's) View

The New York Times reports that Major League Baseball has retained Carl Morris, professor of statistics and professor of health care policy, to assist in its analysis of the seeming upsurge in broken baseball bats this season—variously attributed to the shift from ash to maple, improper curing of the wood, inferior wood, or players' habit of shaving their bat handles to a dangerous degree. Whatever the reason, the risk of being struck or impaled by a flying fragment of a shattered bat poses a real, frightening threat to players and fans alike. In a 2002 article for Harvard Magazine, writer Alan Schwarz probed Morris's professional interest in baseball, noting: "It's hard to imagine Morris getting more worked up over universal healthcare than he does when his beloved Red Sox squelch a rally with a misguided attempt to steal second base."