The inescapable maple bats, con't

It's been 12 days since home-plate umpire Brian O'Nora took a broken bat to the head and had to come out of the game between the Royals and Rockies in Kansas City. The same day, baseball commissioner Bud Selig got his players and safety committee to start collecting data (see story at this link) on maple broken bat statistics.
So far, no one has been mortally wounded. It's not like we're counting it down with a column we did a week ago (linked here), and subsequent blog follow-ups (linked here and here), it's just that we refuse to go away quietly.
Here are some of the latest maple bat related stories in the last week:

==Colorado Rockies shortstop Troy Tulowitzki says he doesn't think it mattered that it was a maple bat that he shattered in frustration and put himself on the disabled list (see story linked here). "I think ash would have done the same thing," he said during a press conference to explain how the shattered bat sliced open the palm of his hand in what he described as "a scary moment."

==National Public Radio aired a story on the issue (linked here) where Brian Boltz, general manager of Larimer & Norton Inc., the timber division of Hillerich & Bradsby (maker of Louisville Sluggers) and Lloyd Smith, associate professor of mechanical and materials engineering at Washington State University, talk about how bats are made and why different wood bats behave differently at the plate.

==The Columbus Post Dispatch ran a story (linked here) on the subject quoting Indians manager Eric Wedge saying he's in favor of banning maple bats: "I'm off maple. I know the players like it, but I see those bats boomeranging into the stands and on the field. I'd hate to see someone have to get seriously hurt before they do something about it, but that's usually the way it works."

==The South Carolina Daily Journal/Messenger (linked here) writer Andrew Moore has a piece under the headline "Maple Must Go."

==The Louisville Journal-Courier has a notebook (linked here) on the local minor-league team -- ironically known as the Bats -- where manager Rick Sweet says about the maple bats: "They scare me. Sooner or later somebody is going to get struck. You see bat heads flying, and they're jagged."

==The Idaho Statesman (story linked here) quotes Boise Hawks manager Tom Beyers: "You're looking at that thing going through the air and it is a weapon. I don't know. I don't know what the answer is to that."

==The Minneapolis St. Paul Business Journal ran a piece (lined here) on a company called MaxBats Inc., which makes bats for about 150 big-leaguers, allowing its execs to dispute claims made against maple bats (subscription needed).

==A St. Louis Post-Dispatch notebook on the Cardinals (linked here) noted that on the first day MLB started its data collection, St. Louis and the N.Y. Mets had 10 broken bats in their game. Nine were maple. "How was it any different than what we've seen," manager Tony La Russa said. Earlier, he said, "It's a significant (amount of breaks). I read somewhere that baseball is concerned about it. They should be."