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| SOFTBALL LINKS |
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Safety First, Safety Early, Safety Please!
by Dave
Friday, July 22, 2005
Youth softball can be a very "soft" game. I'm speaking of 7 - 10 year old rec leagues where the pitchers mostly throw slow, non-windmill pitches. The batters mostly hit slow grounders where the biggest issue is whether the fielders can pick up the ball quickly enough to throw out the runner. Many players at this level cannot throw a ball the 60 feet between bases. Sometimes a soft, spongy ten inch ball is used which speeds up the play but has little or no risk for injury. But other times a regular ASA 11 inch ball is used which does hold the potential for injuring players but typically is too heavy for the girls to pitch or hit very hard. At some point players get better and the dangers of the game begin to grow. As a coach, parent, or even player you have a decision to make as to when to begin using serious safety equipment. The purpose of this piece is to tell you the earlier the better.
I sincerely hope you are familiar with all the standard equipment like the typical catcher wears. I sincerely hope you never have your catcher even warm up a decent pitcher without full gear. In most leagues you are not allowed to warm up a pitcher without at least head gear on but you should insist your catchers wear the full regalia at all times while catching pitches. If you are in a game and the umpire is getting impatient as your catcher runs in from the bases and removes her batting helmet to put on her gear and says, "coach, get someone out here with a face mask to warm up your pitcher," please go out and come to a mutual understanding with him or her. If needs be tell the ump that your organization's rules require full equipment so Mr. Umpire, sir or mam, please take a pill and chill. Even if there is no safety risk, you are teaching your kids to think safety first and you are getting them used to playing with the equipment on. There are no negative side affects of being overly cautious!
I suppose the first piece of extraordinary safety equipment you will encounter is the batter's face guard. It looks a bit like a football face mask. I remember the first time I saw one thinking that this was a little too much. I never wore a face mask for all the years I played baseball. I haven't seen any boys wearing them. Why do girls need these things if boys don't? At the earliest ages, my girls faced lolly-pop pitches and, even when they made good contact, could barely hit the ball past the pitcher. I figured I would worry about face guards when the level of play got better. Unfortunately I forgot about them until the day one was actually needed.
Here is the answer as to why batting face guards are important and why you should get one now. Take a look at a standard-issue softball bat. The typical bat is fatter than a baseball bat. The curve of the metal from the handle to the barrel is much more drastic than on a baseball bat. To see why this matters, put the bat out in front of you as if you were just about to make contact. Envision a slightly inside pitch on which your daughter gets full extension on the swing. The pitch hits the bat right where it's curved. The ball bounces off the bat and hits your daughter right in the face! I was unlucky enough to see this first hand. I was coaching first base and the batter was my daughter. She hit herself on the cheekbone, nearly breaking it. But imagine if she had hit herself in the eye or squarely on her nose. I couldn't sleep that night going over the possibilities. As to why you should get one now even if your daughter is playing in a league where the ball is actually soft and spongy, ask yourself why you should not get her acclimated to wearing a face guard now so she will be familiar with it in the future. Also, ask yourself if you are not going to bother now, precisely when do you plan to buy one. Are you going to wait like I did until she actually hits herself in the face on a foul tip?
As a final word on batting face guards, your league will likely only mandate their usage if state law requires it. I understand that some states do and some will in the future - I know that my home state does not but will next year. I would like to see the sport require this before every state does but that is unlikely. But you're capable of making these decisions for your own kid so go out and get one. I really do not know the full spectrum of what is available but you want one that allows good peripheral vision yet does not come close to allowing an 11 inch ball through. The actual mask should be covered with rubbery vinyl so it never chips throwing a small piece into your child's eyes. You must inspect it regularly and replace it if the vinyl becomes dry, cracked or in any way chipped.
The next item up for discussion is the fielders face guard. This is roughly akin to the kinds of face guards basketball players who have broken their noses use. It is possibly something you have never seen used in softball. I know I've never seen it used at any level of play. If you want to see one, go over to SoftballJunk.com's safety equipment page and look for "GameFace" or "Fielder's Mask." This is a great device for any player in the field but especially pitchers who often stand as close as thirty to thirty five feet from the point of bat impact after they end their motion. Considering that pitchers throw 50+ mph at around 12 years old or so and the hit ball is typically twice the speed of the pitch, that means the ball gets back to the pitcher in about one third of a second. I know you probably have not taken a written drivers license test in a couple years but most will ask how long it takes for a human being to step on the brake even in the most alarming situations. The answer the test is looking for is three quarters of a second. Just to do a little math exercise, if you put your kid on the mound without a face guard, you are asking her to react in less than half the time it takes an adult to step on the brake in life-threatening circumstances.
The face guard may be something you aren't too hip about but here's the one I really want to advocate. First let me explain an experience I had the other day. I was watching a 10U Little League game. The batter was a pretty good hitter but she wanted to get better so she spent five days, one hour per day at a hitting camp the week prior to the game. She did a bunch of drills teaching her to hit to all fields but most of the drills were designed to teach her to hit the ball back through the middle. Her instructor was one of the better ones available and her hitting improved quite a bit. On the second pitch, she drilled the ball back to the pitcher. I was standing about 60 feet from the batter and saw her swing but I never saw the ball until it hit the cage next to the first base dugout after it had bounced off the pitcher's clavicle. I don't know if she broke her clavicle but it is a real possibility based on what I saw. All I could think about was how lucky she was! What if the ball had struck her where her in the chest?
There is a type of injury in baseball and softball which make them among the most dangerous sports. The injury is called sudden cardiac arrest (SCA) and it can result from being struck in the chest by a thrown or batted ball. The ball does not have to be moving fast. When it strikes a child at the wrong moment in her heart rhythm, the heart stops beating and in very short order, the child dies.
I had heard of this injury many years ago. I thought it was something extremely rare and perhaps the one instance I heard of a child's death was the only such example in recorded history. If you search sports injuries around the web, it is virtually impossible to find this unless you are specifically searching for "SCA" or "sudden cardiac arrest." A while ago I was having a conversation with a football coach. I told him how I glad I was that I had girls who would never play football like I did. I explained the myriad of injuries I experienced in the game and said I thought football and hockey just had to be the most dangerous sports. He told me I was quite wrong and that baseball and softball not only have more injuries, they have far more life-threatening ones, the most common of which is SCA. I cannot point to any specific stats on SCA but I think it is easy to say that one of these, in your league, while you are watching a game, is one too many. I know I hope to never see it in person. I'm willing to do just about anything to avoid it.
The way to combat SCA is to:
- teach your daughter to turn toward the umpire and catcher when batting if the ball is coming too close to her,
- teach your daughter to hold her upper hand in front of her, just below her eyes, when fielding,
- convince your youth baseball association to obtain (through whatever means possible) an AED (Automated external defibrillator),
- more to the point of this writing, have you daughter wear a device to protect her heart area by dispersing the force of any impact to her chest. Tell other parents about this.
There are numerous sorts of devices for this but I'm not going to review them for you here. I think anything which disperses the force of impact will do quite well. You can find a variety of them as well as any of the safety equipment I have mentioned here in numerous places on and off the internet. SoftballJunk.com sells these. Sports Authority sells many of them as do most reputable sporting goods stores. If you seek, I'm confident you will find.
If you think this discussion has been a waste of your time, if you think the same standard equipment you used as a child is gonna have to be "good enough" for your kid, I have a non-athletic game you can play at home for fun. Get your toaster out, plug it in and turn it on by pushing a very small piece of bread into the slot. Now get a metal fork out of the drawer and have your child try to retrieve the bread using the fork while the toaster is engaged. Now that's some fun! That is what you are doing by putting your kid out there without considering safety first and safety right now.
 
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