What to do about the comebacker?
Baseball’s most dangerous play also happens to be one of its rarest and least preventable. The comeback line drive, zooming straight to a pitcher’s noggin, may only happen a few times every season. But when it happens, it is gruesome. Blood oozes from where the ball’s seams first meet flesh. In some cases, the pitcher loses consciousness.
Despite the horror, line drives to the face are a very rare occurrence. As Dan Jennings of Forbes writes, one in every 300,000 pitches results results in a line drive directly at the pitcher’s head. 99.5% of pitchers are unaffected.
While no deaths by comebackers have occurred in the MLB, the potential for a fatal blow looms. There have been several deaths in professional cricket, a game which, by my limited understanding, is composed primarily of line drives up the middle.
It’s hard to imagine an all-encompassing solution, but Unequal Technologies is looking to remove some of the risk of comebacker-induced head injuries. The have produced a lightweight kevlar-lined insert that goes inside of the pitchers’ hat, and at least 6 Chicago White Sox pitchers are using them.
The jury is still out on whether the cap inserts are worth using. Unequal reports that the inserts tested well against 83 mph line drives, which is the average speed of a line drive, but not the average speed of an unavoidable, indefensible bullet of a line drive like the one that hit Carlos Carrasco on Tuesday night.
Still, if it could help, and we don’t know that it doesn’t help, why not give your dome that extra 5 1/2 ounces of protection if it could save your life?