HS Season over, here comes summer ball
 

I finished my high school season yesterday. Worked the plate in a sectional game that really was 2 games in 1:

The line:

Visitors - 00000 - 0
Home - 000(11)x - 11

The game was scoreless through 3.5 innings and I had two seven-or-less pitch innings (someone told me later). We had 3.5 played in about 30 minutes.

Then the wheels fell off. I remember that the first 2 outs of the bottom of the fourth were force outs at the plate. This came after many, many runs were scored. The turning point was when the visiting pitcher hung a 1-2 curveball that the batter drilled to the fence. Before that, visiting F1 had great confidence in the pitch and even had some swinging strikeouts with pitches in the dirt. After that double, though, I don't remember one effective curveball until they finally removed him after 6-7 runs had scored.

I also took a decent velocity fastball (untouched) straight to the helmet somewhere in the middle of the inning. The ringing gave way to nothing, but I ended up with a pretty decent headache an hour or two later. I felt better later in the day. I'm pretty convinced I would've fared no better with a traditional mask on this shot as it hit right on the bars over my forehead.

Linescore for the bottom of the fourth? 11 runs, 5 hits, 6 errors, 2 LOB. And yes, we play with the 10-run-rule, even in the playoffs.

So it was a very strange 1:15 game. And now, it's only summer ball left.

I took a decent velocity fast ball, not even waved at by the catcher, straight to the mask last night. The mask spun off, as designed. I felt nothing, heard no ringing and never had a heacache. I'm pretty convinced that I'd have heard a ringing and had a headache an hour or two later had I not given away my HSM.

I'm not sure mine would've fit into that category. It hit at a spot where I don't think the mask would've spun off, but I'm not completely certain, of course.

I did order a new mask last week, so maybe this was just a twist of fate :)

I still think helmets will dominate the game 10-20 years from now. They certainly did take over the catcher's market pretty quickly.

I agree that eventuallly HSM's will dominate the activity. I understand that at PBUC the administrators encouraged the candidates to at least give an HSM a try to see if it worked for them. I don't yet know how many have done that.

One of the Evans 20 Honor grads wore an HSM during school, but ditched it prior to going to PBUC.

Most of the talk about masks among the PBUC candidates and instructors centered on the traditional mask and finding the right combination of weight and dependability.

I have always wondered which provides the best protection. My son who works in the South Atlantic League took a 96MPH foul ball straight back to his West Vest Mask yesterday and suffered a concussion from it. The ball severely bent the bars on his mask.

He has had many discussions with fellow Minor League Umpires and the ones that wear HSM have told him many times that the HSM affords greater protection. He has been reluctant to switch but after yesterday has decided to give the HSM a try.

Not sure which one is better...I guess we will see!

Mark

I suspect that maybe your mask was too tight. They are designed to spread out the energy of an impact - if you got a headache from it, too much of the energy transferred to your head, likely indicating the entire thing was too attached to your head.

Rich,

When you work summer ball, will you work mostly two man or one man games?

If the HSM is ever proven to prevent such injuries, "encouragement" from the leagues, PBUC and insurance carries will speed up their acceptance in pro ball. But so far, there is no evidence that they will do that. The primary safety factor is that they cover more of the head, not that they will prevent of minimize face-on injuries.

I hope you son is okay.

My son recently took the online test to establish his reacton time that will be used as a baseline should he suffer a concussion in the future. It is encouraging to note that PBUC is concerned with the issue.

To whom is this addressed? The poster reporting the headache was wearing an HSM not a mask.

That's probably one of the best measures of concussions, and great to see that leagues are adopting the testing proactively.

Garth:
 

I find it interesting that the CDC will release a study this month that calls concussions an "epidemic" at the high school level and lower.

This is why we saw this year in the NFHS Rule Book a POE about head injury trauma and the care.

As the NFL slowly admits to the long term effect of brain injuries to their retired players I believe we are on the edge of a new view of head injuries.

We are currently working on articles for the new NFHS magazine that deals with player head injuries . . . I think baseball umpires would be a great source to review for head injuries to sport officials.

Regards,

Tim Christensen

National Federation of High Schools
Publication Committee

"High School Today"

I'm not a physiologist, but do you think the headache that Rich felt was due to the way the shock of the blow was distributed by the HSM? With the traditional mask, the impact of the blow causes the mask to spin and fly off the face, and there is little force actually felt. The mask may sustain damage but not the wearer.

I'm sure a "physicist" or an engineer might be able to offer some insight as to how the impact is distributed...

I think most of us had to have head injuries to take up umpiring. ;)

Perhaps it could be from something as simple as the noise of the impact as evidenced by the ringing in his ears.