I like the traditional umpire look, complete with the traditional protective face mask. I have been contemplating a hockey style mask though for a couple of reasons.
For one, I think that it might be cooler than having to wear a wool hat under a regular mask. Two, I am starting to come around to the way it looks, having seen a few MLB umpires who now where them. Third, some of the games I do have close backstops or worse yet, wood back stops and it is just a matter of time before I catch a richocet on the back of my head. Fourth, I have heard that the view out of them is better than that of a regular mask. His High Holiness also just related a story of how he required three stitches to his face when his mask spun around after getting struck with a ball. That has got me thinking too.
So, anybody out there where the hockey style masks? Care to make any comments on how they work, if they are cooler, do you get a better view of the strike zone, etc.? What are the downsides?
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Well I am certainly wiser than this man. It is only too likely that neither of us has any knowledge to boast of; but he thinks that he knows something which he does not know, whereas I am quite conscious of my ignorance. At any rate it seems that I am wiser than he is to this small extent, that I do not think that I know what I do not know. ~Socrates
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