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Originally Posted by Eastshire
It doesn't take a whole lot of harm to weigh out the risk of death. The risk of death is miniscule. How many players were killed while wearing the current helmet that would not have been killed with the proposed helmet? Only 10 fatalities from playing baseball were reported to the National Center for Catastrophic Sports Injury Research from 1982 to 2002, although it is unclear how many of those relate to being hit by a pitched ball (let alone to the face) ( http://ajs.sagepub.com/cgi/content/abstract/32/5/1189).
Now, how much damage to the game are we willing to accept in order to mitigate the risk of such an unlikely occurance? How much actual damage to the game does face protection cause? What kind of protection are we talking about.
Without a study of the affect of the new helmet on play, it does not make sense to make a change based on such an unlikely event. |
I understand your point, but I'm still asking how adding a facemask "damages the game" or to jk's point, how many have been killed due to having to wear a facemask.
You say it doesn't take a whole lot of harm ... I see NO harm here.
Think about it - umpire wears a faceguard - not wearing one would be considered completely ridiculous by 100% of the people on this board. Catcher wears a faceguard - same reasons. Why in the world shouldn't the batter? After all, the catcher has a glove and knows where the ball is going... the umpire has the catcher in front of him. It's just as likely to hit the batter's face as the catcher's or umpires ... yet there's no harm to the game forcing the catcher or umpire to wear one - and they can see the ball just fine. I don't see even a miniscule amount of harm from the batter wearing one.