Baseball Preview Day 4: Concussions In Baseball

This was the play that ended Justin Morneau's season.

Justin Morneau was 0-10 in live baseball games this spring up until this week. He was hit by a few balls and took a few good cuts, but he just couldn’t seem to get going.

 

Recovering from a concussion in baseball may be harder than one would ever think.

 

Morneau hasn’t played since July 7^th of last year when his head met the knee of Blue Jays infielder John McDonald during his attempted breakup of a double play. At first it was supposed to be a mild concussion that was going to keep him out for one-maybe two games.

 

Then the All-Star game past… then August… September… the playoffs… and a month of spring training. Morneau had not had an at-bat in over 90 games of live ball due to that one seemingly harmless play that has hurt him in the short-term and possibly could effect him for the long haul.

 

It’s also raised awareness about the severity of concussions in Major League Baseball and what the future holds for players who could end up like Morneau.

 

Concussions as you know have become a hot topic in football and hockey circles recently. Head injuries have been moved to the forefront in light of devastating injuries that have occurred recently to Sidney Crosby, Austin Collie, Marc Savard and a slew of other players.

 

Crosby’s case is similar to Morneau’s in the sense that the hit he took he took in the Winter Classic seemed relatively harmless but has kept him out for nearly 4 months.

Concussions have been a major cause for concern in the NHL and NFL.

The difference in the cases of the NFL, NHL and now the MLB is that football and hockey are much more physical sports with a higher risk for injury. The NFL reported that this year had the number of recorded head injuries in the history of the league. The news has made the league more cautious of how to handle head injuries and it is going over guidelines on how to make the league safer for players.

 

You wouldn’t think that Major League Baseball would have the same cause for concern. Even in instances when we do see a player hit in the head by a pitch or by a line drive the severity of the injury is relatively low.

 

There have been instances where I’ve seen players hit in the head by wild pitches and the fall, get up, shake it off and act like nothing happened.

 

The dynamic changed four years ago when Mike Coolbaugh, a first-base coach of the Texas league’s Tulsa Drillers was killed by a line drive in the ninth inning of a game. Ever since then first and third-base coaches have to wear batting helmets as a mandatory guideline mandated by the league.

 

However, most batting helmets protect against a certain level of speed that a ball is thrown. Most Major League batting helmets to tend to protect against speeds that hit only up to 80 mph (even Barry Zito’s fastball hits 80… sometimes). But for the most part there’s no way that those helmets are going to be useful if a Justin Verlander fastball goes AWOL and knocks a guy out.

 

In recent years, helmets have been designed to protect against 90 mph and Rawlings introduced the S100 helmet, which can protect batters against 100 mph fastballs. The thing is that these helmets are not required to be worn by teams. Simply put, baseball’s motto is, wear a helmet, it doesn’t matter what kind it is as long as you got one on. The reality is that the S100 should be a mandatory piece of equipment worn by Major league Baseball teams.

 

Then there are other instances where head injuries can occur.

Jason Bay's season was also cut short after running into a wall.

 

Mets outfielder Jason Bay suffered a season ending concussion by running into a padded wall at Dodger Stadium on July 23^rd. Anyone who watches baseball knows that those walls have as much padding as the Mets have good luck. Very little.

 

Up until the Bay injury no one has ever really though of how to make those walls safer. Now they may want to. Padded walls have led to injuries suffered by Ken Griffey Jr. and Aaron Rowand amongst others. In Bay’s case losing a guy to a concussion by running into a cement wall with 3 inches of foam padding might be cause for greater concern.

 

We always see players give up their bodies to make plays to keep a game in their favor. Now those types of plays can knock a guy out for long periods of time. I’m not saying the MLB should make outfielders wear helmets incase something were to happen, but they have to view their options before someone gets seriously injured again

 

These are issues that should be made relevant by players in the CBA talks, which will be ongoing all season as it is set to expire in December.

 

Player safety in baseball should be just as equal of a concern as it is in the NFL and NHL. Before MLB starts having the same issues as the other two sports they need to act now. They can’t afford to have many more incidents like the Morneau and Bay cases before it becomes prevalent in the national.

 

The good news is that last night Justin Morneau smacked two doubles against Boston Red Sox last night and that his fielding has been superb all spring training.

 

The Twins need him to make a deep postseason run this fall. Let’s hope he’ll be healthy enough to be there.

Baseball Preview Day 3: Meet The Mess

Fred Wilpon and the Mets are baseball's biggest joke.

Growing up in New York there are lines crossed with which baseball teams you have to follow.

 

The Bronx and Staten Island are primarily Yankees fans, Brooklyn and Queens were partial to the Mets and Manhattan is always split in half.

 

Being that I am from Brooklyn I should have been a Mets fan growing up. My mom was a Mets fan, my Dad was a Mets fan, my uncles, aunts and cousins were all Mets fans. Yet somehow during the Steve Sax, Randy Velerde and Luis Polonia days I was always partial to the Yankees.

 

I couldn’t tell you why I was more partial to the Pinstripes, but I was. Both teams had great play-by-play guys, Phil Rizzuto for the Yanks, Ralph Kiner for the Mets, both teams were at the bottom of their divisions and going to Yankee and Shea stadium really wasn’t too different to me because both places were dumps.

 

Yet I liked the Yankees more. My first games was a Yankees game, my first hat was a Yankees hat, and my favorite player at the time was still Andre Dawson so I couldn’t like the Mets anyway because I would always want Dawson’s Cubs to go off on the Mets.

 

20 years later when I look back on those times and my subconscious decision-making I’m so happy that I became a Yankees fan, because the Mets stink.

 

Actually let me rephrase that…  the Mets are the biggest mess in baseball ever.

 

As a fan of this team there isn’t a single reason that you should look forward to this season. You’re team is bleeding money thanks to the Bernie Madoff Ponzi scheme, your lineup cant produce runs in any way shape form or fashion, your star players can’t stay on the field and your pitching staff is horrendous.

 

Mets tried to talk themselves into Oliver Perez, fail. They gave Carlos Beltran 119 million 7 years ago in hopes that he would be the piece that put them over the top, fail. They traded for Johan Santana in hopes that he would carry their staff to the top of the division, fail. Jason Bay, Luis Castillo, K-rod, J.J. Putz, fail, fail, fail.

Oliver Perez... insert joke here.

 

There have a laundry list of deficiencies that have hindered this team on off of the field. Whether its Jose Reyes’s health or K-rod knocking out his girlfriends dad, Johan’s sex scandal or the Willie Randolph firing. The Mets have been baseballs best soap opera for years and the hits just keep on coming.

 

When you look at the Mets have some talent on paper. Ike Davis was a mid-season call-up last year that showed potential and, Mike Pelfrey could possibly be a top of the rotation guy and the face of the franchise, and David Wright, is one of the best third basemen in the game. Yet on the field they have no cohesiveness, no consistency, no nothing.

Watching the Mets is like a lesson in futility. They were 24^th in the league in runs scored, hits and home runs,  22^nd in batting average, 25^th in OBP. Their pitching was mediocre as well by being 18^th in the league in WHIP and BAA, and that was due in part to Pelfrey and Santana.

 

They made mistakes in crucial situations, they were a sideshow of errors that came with a blooper reel in the field that seemed to happen every other day. There were times where I think I saw Wright mutter to himself “two more years and I’m out of here,” and I wouldn’t blame him.

 

Would you want to play for this team? This is a team with no identity, a dark future, an owner who needs money, a fan base that’s embarrassed to come to the park and watch them and in their division they are an easy choice for 5^th.

 

The Mets bad decision from the Beltran and Santana deals, to the quick trigger release of Randolph, to the Madoff scandal, have crippled them to the point where they could easily be one of the worst teams in the league.

If you were David Wright, you'd be feeling like this too.

Entering this year they don’t have Santana until the summer time, the are still concerned about Beltran’s health as well as Reyes’, and their only hope in their rotation is Chris Young, who hasn’t been healthy in 3 years, Pelfrey, Jon Niese and the ageless wonder R.A. Dickey.

 

And you thought the Yankees had pitching problems.

 

If you want any good news, Beltran’s contract comes off of the books this year and there is optimism with Davis and David Murphy possibly playing everyday, and that’s about it.

 

The rest is one big snowball that hasn’t reached the bottom of the hill yet and seems to be rolling along at a steady pace.

 

The Yankees problems with pitching, age and deciding the future of the team would be welcomed in Queens. At least have some idea about what’s going on and on what to do about it. The Mets on the other hand are taking it day-to-day, not knowing what will happen next.

 

It’s a sad story of a team that 5 years ago was a World Series contender and three years ago was a front-runner in the NL East. Nowadays they would be thankful enough to have a day without something going wrong.