more bad news for baseball and beyond

Many major league hitters may now favor maple bats, but Babe Ruth, Roger Maris, and Hank Aaron all used ash. The source of most of the ash billets used by the Louisville Slugger company to make their bats is in northern Pennsylvania. The mountains there are home to the best hardwood forests in the US. But the ash forests are dying. About seven years ago they were infested by the deadly emerald ash borer beetle, which was discovered in Pennsylvania only three years ago. By then it was in effect too late to do much about the infestation. It is, said a PA environmental agent, a devastating natural catastrophe, which will have cascading effects. Those effects will be felt far beyond baseball. I saw a story on the topic on my local Comcast station and it made me want to make a trip along Rt. 6 to Warren County, where much of the forests are. Rt. 6 is one of my favorite roads anywhere and I hate to have to think of it in such sad terms.