Helmets

[Phu Bai]

 MLB recently requires base coaches to wear "batting helmets"(after the Coolbaugh incident)...
 Has there ever been discussion of base umpires wearing such protection? or do they already wear inserts?

 

[beerguy55]

On 1/25/2020 at 6:39 AM, maven said:

Base coaches are seldom watching the ball, which puts them at greater risk for being hit.

Umpires are always watching the ball, which lowers their risk of being hit. 

Much less reason to require base umpires to wear helmets.

Coaches "mostly" watch the ball, not seldom....they may not have their eye on it 100% of the time, but it's as close as practically possible.   Like an ump has other duties and things to observe  will the pitcher is getting ready to deliver, and then follows the ball, coaches do the same.  Coaches aren't at any greater risk today of getting hit than they were before that coach died. 

The fact that there are rules specific to the case of umpires being hit by a batted ball acknowledges that it happens enough to warrant defining scenarios and outcomes.  It happens several times during the course of a MLB season.  Even when they are watching the ball all the time.  It's only pure luck that one hasn't been hit in the head by a 110 mph line drive. It's also pure luck that the handful of pitchers who have been nailed still remember the alphabet, let alone survived.   People speculate about broken necks in NFL or a skate slicing a jugular in the NHL resulting in a death on live TV...it will be a pitcher taking a line drive to the head during a nationwide Fox broadcast.

MLB waited for a coach to die to invoke the rule.  I suspect the Umpire's association will do the same...right or wrong.  Once something bad happens those in charge have to present optics of "doing something." Being proactive is too inconvenient and that is the only reason the rule isn't in place.  Everything is reactionary...everything is unprecedented until it happens...and once it happens everyone assumes it will happen again....they somehow think the odds change and go nuts, when in reality all that has happened is a hypothetical possibility became real.   It's why we now have to take off our shoes at the airport security line.   And box cutters were just as dangerous on Sept. 10 as they were on Sept. 12. 

Softball Canada is now considering mandating helmets for slow pitch, after, in BC,  a batter running to first was killed by an errant throw by the shortstop.  Softball BC has already mandated it.   Once an umpire gets killed it will no longer be a discussion about math.