Foul Ball (not tips) Concussions

[Kaliix]

Interesting article here on the Giants catcher Mike Matheny. Seems he took too many foul balls (not foul tips damn it!) and now is suffering the continuing affects of a concussion.

What is more interesting is that he was wearing a HSM and the Giants organization thought that the HSM might be the reason.

Matheny uses the hockey-style mask preferred by some catchers for its better sight lines, and he was initially convinced it contributed to his concussion. But the Giants enlisted two testing centers to compare the impact resistance of the hockey mask to the traditional catcher's mask -- and, so far, they appear to offer similar protection.

Of course I saw the plate umpire in the Boston/NY series (i think) take a broken bat to the side of the head. No protection with his traditional mask. Sal Fasano took Ramirez's bat off his noggin today as well. Luckily he was wearing a helmet.

And don't take this as me trying to change anyone's mind to go to the HSM. Do what you want, I don't care... The post was more about the concussions and what I thought was a good article. But with the two incidences I saw in the past couple days, I wanted to note that the HSM protects you no better than a mask from foul balls but will help with the bats...