Heart guard?

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Oct 11, 2010
8,337
113
Chicago, IL
DD is quick as a cat. She has never been hurt pitching but a few balls whizzed a couple inches by her head that she didn't even react to. Scary for parent.

Not against heart guard at all but make sure field has a difbulater and that someone knows how to use it.
 
Sep 22, 2021
382
43
Sioux Falls, SD
Honestly, I'd say anything to protect the pitcher that does not impede their ability to play, use it. Masks should be 100% no questions asked, shattered orbitals, nose and cheek reconstruction is not fun and costs just a little more than a $40 face mask.

For the heart, it's literally blunt force trauma and it's all about the timing of the heart beat if it happens. Anything to lesson the compression off the chest the better I would say.
 

LEsoftballdad

DFP Vendor
Jun 29, 2021
2,838
113
NY
I saw it happen first-hand a few years ago when I was coaching Little League. Two brothers were in a cage pitching and hitting to one another without an L screen. On one pitch, one of the boys hit a ball right into his brother's chest, stopping his heart. Thankfully, there were several medical professionals and a police officer near by to help out. The cop grabbed the portable AED and shocked him back into rhythm.

They wound up taking him to the hospital, but he made a full recovery. He learned a lesson that day to always use a screen.
 
Jan 22, 2011
1,610
113
A couple years before I got involved in my local rec league we had a pitcher’s heart stop in 10u when hit by a line drive off a composite bat. After that, until a year or two ago, the league used low compression balls in 10u and banned composite bat use during rec season. For about 16 years and after my DD stopped playing rec until they went back to hard ball for 10u rec.

The girl survived and the Stanford softball team visited her in the hospital.

NFHS a couple years ago added a requirement for baseball catcher’s chest protectors to have heart protection.

My DD usually only warms up pitchers and only caught 3 HS games last spring. I got a real good deal on a chest protector over the summer— likely because it isn’t legal for baseball anymore.
 
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Oct 4, 2018
4,611
113
Yes, my daughter uses one whenever she pitches. Although she finds it uncomfortable, the EvoShield one with the hard plastic shell is the best on the market.

We use the same one. She knows she's not allowed to pitch without it on, and she's good with it. She'd have it no other way, in fact.
 
Oct 4, 2018
4,611
113
When they first came out they didn't actually protect the heart against commotio cordis. Read the fine print as perhaps the technology has changed.

If it brings you and your daughter peace of mind that's great. Just understand what it will and won't do.

We wear it more to protect from broken/cracked ribs, bruises, etc. We wore it long before the Buffalo Bills incident. We treat it like shin guards for soccer. It will lessen the pain and time away from the game (more than not wearing one).
 
May 29, 2015
3,731
113
I had forgotten about it, but my mom texted us after the Bills' player went down. We used to play with a kid who lived next door to my grandmother and he was involved in one of these incidents. Two boys out front just playing baseball and a line drive to the chest killed one of them. This was probably the mid- to late-1980s.

Thing is, all these years later and none of us can exactly remember when or whether the neighbor kid was the one who died or the one who hit the ball.

It's amazing that the news didn't exist before 2000. All I was able to find was this story out of Georgia in 2002: https://abcnews.go.com/GMA/story?id=126084&page=1

The vast majority of the commotio cordis victims die. Nearly all of them are male, under the age of 20, which is when the chest wall finishes developing. The most vulnerable are children under the age of 12 whose chest cages are narrow, and who have underdeveloped chest muscles. Experts say that while most chest injuries are associated with football or baseball, they can even occur in the home with objects that are not considered dangerous.

The JAMA study found that bodily contact during shadow boxing, playing with the pet dog, parent-child discipline, gang rituals, intervening in scuffles, and attempts to remedy the hiccups have also caused death.

But, 60 percent of the incidents are caused by baseballs. Most of the other sports-related cases occurred in ice hockey, with other instances reported in connection with football, lacrosse, basketball, cricket, martial arts, boxing, fights, and vehicular accidents.

Some of these things may seem like trivialities, but keep freak accidents like this in mind when you think "what's the harm?" in using illegal equipment. Bats (and other tested equipment) are tested with specific balls and each organization has a different standard. Many of them overlap or coincide, but not always. Our bat-guys and bat-gals can speak far better to this than I can, but one of the things bat testing looks at is the speed of the ball coming off the bat. Their standards are supposed to regulate this. That really leapt to mind reading @Dabears17 's comment about the composite bat and changing balls.
 
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