- Feb 7, 2013
- 3,188
- 48
My son plays little league and for the most part these players are not any better than the girls and the ball is harder gets hit harder and I've never seen a player wear a mask. A few wear when they bat but very few. It's a flaw in the girls game that I see.
Having coached PONY baseball for several years, the reason the boys don't wear facemasks and cages on their batting helmets is because adult males coach these teams "when we were kids, we didn't need a mask..." and the college players and MLB are too "macho" to wear them. This same mindset permeates into softball. I have seen several baseball batters get hit in the face because they were not wearing a cage and it wasn't pretty. And then you will occasionally see an inconspicuous padded helmet worn under the baseball cap (presumedly to protect the top of the head from concussions????) but god forbid a pitcher actually wears a face mask on the mound.
The "old school" mentality of no masks for fielders and no cages on batting helmets needs to be reevaluted. These hot, composite bats and better conditioned athletes in both baseball and softball can do some serious, disfiguring damage to the face. While softball has been slow to adopt fielding masks, baseball safety masks is going at a snails pace.