Stephen D. Keener, president and CEO of Little League Baseball Inc., said the settlement guaranteed that "Steven Domalewski will receive the lifetime care he will require as a result of this tragic accident, a type of accident that is extremely rare in youth baseball."
Fronzuto said the settlement precluded him from discussing details, including whether any of the defendants admitted liability.
Domalewski was pitching when the batter rocketed a line drive off the metal bat. The ball slammed into Domalewski's chest, just above his heart, knocking him backward. He clutched his chest, then made a motion to reach for the ball on the ground to pick it up and throw to first base to get the runner out.
But he never got that far. The ball had struck his chest at the millisecond between heartbeats, sending him into cardiac arrest, according to his doctors. He crumpled to the ground and stopped breathing.
His father, Joseph, a teacher who was on the sideline with the rest of the team, said he and a third-base coach from the other team ran onto the field, where his son was already turning blue.
Someone yelled, "Call 911!" Within 90 seconds, a man trained in cardiopulmonary resuscitation who had been playing catch with his 9-year-old daughter jumped over the fence and started to work on the youth.
Paramedics who were a quarter-mile away doing a CPR demonstration got to Domalewski within minutes, placed an oxygen mask over his face, and rushed him to a hospital. But the damage had been done, as his brain had been without oxygen for 15 to 20 minutes.
"Pretty much, he died," Joseph Domalewski said in a 2008 interview. "It was just so fast. The thud, you could hear. When it hit him, that seemed to echo."
Domalewski was playing in a Police Athletic League game, but Little League was sued because the group certifies that specific metal bats are approved for - and are safe for - use in games involving children.
Rick Redman, a spokesman for Hillerich & Bradsby, manufacturers of the Louisville Slugger bat, confirmed that a settlement had been reached, but declined to comment further.
An attorney representing the Sports Authority, the retailer, did not immediately return calls seeking comment.
Little League reached an agreement with the major manufacturers in the early 1990s to limit metal bats' performance to that of the best wooden bats. Little League said in 2008 that injuries to its pitchers fell from 145 a year before the accord was reached to the current level of about 20 to 30 annually.
The organization's website lists scores of metal bat models that remain approved for use in Little League play.
