Ok, I know I now sound like a nerd, but what I truly got most out of the class was an awareness to not believe everything you see and hear; in any field whether it be in science, politics or even in advertising. A specific example of the latter, I recall my professor discussing that results of the Pepsi Challenge were skewed to always favor Pepsi due to the order in which drinks were presented. Were you aware of that?
I couldn't help but reflect on my sophomore level class after reading the article of an experiment performed by 4 seniors from Kettering University - that's Flint, Michigan (I had to look it up) that compared the safety of a traditional catcher's style mask with that of a hockey style helmet. Their findings may surprise you, at least upon the first read.
You can read the full article here or read more below where I discuss my concerns with the study, mention one interesting potential finding you may not have thought about and present other unanswered questions we'd all like to know for sure.
Their first conclusion was that hockey style helmets protect better from impacts to the side of the head. No surprise there. That's been the conventional wisdom for some time but the manner in which they tested it was completely flawed. The testing procedure of the side impact must have assumed that when a catcher (or umpire) gets hit on the side that he or she moves by turning his or her head 90 degrees so that the impact is taken directly onto the side. If you are a knowledgeable umpire, you know that you're taught not to react or to flinch so that not only can you make the call but also so that protection remains in all the right places.
Specifically, they launched a ball from a skeet shooter (beside the point is "why not use a pitching machine?") directly from the side into the helmet's side. Now you and I know the beauty of a hockey style helmet is its steep angles that results in most balls hitting the side as glancing blows, not direct ones. Their methodology didn't allow for determining this force, the one of a more typical indirect hit. The overall results were still the same, of course, and that is the hockey style did better on the side.
But you know, at that angle, how did the traditional style mask stand a chance? There's no protection at all from a direct impact to the side. The only possible direct one there might come from a bat (has been known to happen... even from a broken one), a foul ball that careened from the backstop (you know who you are) or a beer thrown from the crowd (ok, I made that one up).
The second conclusion the Kettering students made was that traditional style masks performed better on frontal impacts. What? Yes, you might want to re-read that line. They tested this using the same skeet shooter and launching a direct hit onto the front center of each protective head piece. At first glance, this flies in the face of conventional wisdom in that the perception is that hockey style helmets are more protective in all situations. However, the frontal or "nose" shot tested to each was only one dead center shot. It sure would have been nice to have seen a range of locations in the front rather than one location out of many.
Regardless, their study and second conclusion does lead to an interesting point. Is there a place on a hockey style helmet that is as flat as that on traditional style masks to allow for the same or greater force from a baseball (or softball)? Looking at helmets from Wilson, Diamond and Pro Nine (they tested All-Star gear BTW), this is certainly worth considering in the Diamond and Pro Nine brands (All Star and most others, too) with their flatter middle fronts.
Overall, in my opinion, the students would have done better to have concluded that
"We've found there is one small area where helmets could offer no better or less protection than that of masks, but we didn't really go all out by testing multiple hits, hit locations and/or angles."Other Thoughts
- The study mentions that despite there being force differences between the 2 styles, that no force readings on either using the angles and velocity they tested would have resulted in any concussions. This was even the case considering they were launching the ball 100 MPH onto the youth helmet they used as testing for the helmet.
- It doesn't appear All-Star was very happy about them using their mask for this test and appears that they asked for a disclaimer (and an apology) as seen at the bottom of the article.
- Despite my mostly negative critique, I do applaud the students on many levels including bringing attention onto this important issue. Not only did they do a better job than I would have done at their age, I also assume that their project's parameters were probably limited from the start.
- Physics dictates a flatter low profile umpire mask will divert less force than a more curved standard one, but how much less and is this a significant difference?
- More padding between the ball and you as in Wilson's wrap around padding is more protective than one with less padding but how much more protective and how significant is this difference to umpires at various levels?
- At what point do masks with lighter weight frames become less protective than those with heavier weights? (A good question proposed by Warren Workman of Umpire-Empire.com).
2 comments:
I am really really confused! After reading your comments and the linked story, I don't know how they got away with submitting this for a class project?!? I'm not a scientist, but even I know that you can't run a test one time, with one piece of equipment (brand/model) and "approximate" measurements (like the speed of the strike) and expect to draw any real, relevant or believeable conclusions. To me, this sounds like a preliminary test run just to find out if they have a viable theory for testing.
As a side note, they said in the story that the speed range was to account for a foul tip "probably" being slowed down by the bat. I have seen radar gun data of foul balls actually speeding up dramatically (50%-75%) between the bat and the umpire/catcher.
I think I should apply for a government grant to get to the bottom of this!!
Thanks for the story, its definately food for thought.
I agree that this is a good start and it's nice to see students attempting this sort of study. But it obviously isn't conclusive. I'd have liked to have seen this applied to equal quality masks - All-Star make the point that the masks were different grades of quality. I'd like to know how tightly the traditional mask was tied to the dummy - I think we all learned to have the traditional mask looser than tight so that it "gives" when hit. this is particularly true when its not right on the nose. You can't do that with hockey style masks which is why the professional range has shock absorbers. I used a cheaper one for a season when they first came out and I found all the shock of the ball hitting the mask transferred to my head and neck. Of course it is true that the traditional mask doesn't have any side protection, so obviously it will do less well than a hockey style mask. It's also true that as umpires we are trained to keep facing forward and not turn away from a ball. But in fairness to the study, this was targeted toward catchers rather than umpires, and I know I would rather see kids using a hockey style helmet because it takes them a long while to learn not to avert their head, and strikes to the side are much more commonplace at least up to 15 or 16 years of age. In summary it was good to see but left me wanting to see more.
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