By Howard M. Wasserman, Professor of Law, FIU College of Law
The problem of concussions and head trauma–the source of litigation, consternation, and bad press for the National Football League the past several years–is coming to baseball.
Last month, posthumous examination of the brain of former Major Leaguer Ryan Freel, who died from a self-inflicted gunshot wound in 2012, showed signs of Chronic Traumatic Encephalopathy (CTE), the degenerative brain disease often found in athletes who suffer multiple head traumas. By some estimates, Freel suffered nine or ten concussions during his career, from plays such as a collision with a teammate in the field and getting hit in the head by an errant pick-off throw. Freel is the first former MLB player diagnosed with CTE, a condition that has been found or suspected in dozens of former NFL players.
Around the same time, Major League Baseball announced rule changes prohibiting collisions at home plate. Catchers no longer can block the plate unless trying to make a play on a ball and runners cannot barrel over the catcher to try to knock the ball loose–essentially, the rules for plays at home plate are the same as the rule for plays at the other bases. The change is intended to increase safety, particularly for catchers, avoiding not only concussions, but also broken bones and other injuries. Not unexpectedly, people decried a change to the “essence” of the game, some even likening it to eliminating tackling from football. (Ironically, Johnny Bench, the greatest two-way catcher in baseball history, praised the rule and said it was long overdue).
Catchers do remain particularly susceptible to concussions. According to reports, in 2013 18 players were placed on the Disabled List with concussions or head-related trauma, 10 of them catchers. Besides the collisions that have been removed from the game, the most common cause of head injuries in catchers is getting hit in the head or face with foul tips. Other frequent causes of head injuries in all players include getting hit in the head by a pitched or thrown ball, getting hit in the head by a batted ball, unintentional collisions on the base paths, unintentional collisions between fielders chasing a batted ball, and fielders running into fences trying to make a play on a ball.
And therein lies the challenge to making baseball safer. The plays likely to lead to head injuries are not intentional or intended parts of the game, at least now that deliberate home-plate collisions have been outlawed. They are incidental effects of unsuccessful efforts to do other things and often happen entirely by accident. Neither the injured nor injuring player intended to do what caused the injury–fielders do not want to hit runners with throws and runners do not want to get hit with the ball; two fielders do not want to crash into one another; batters do not want to hit foul tips and pitchers and catchers do not want them to. These plays occur when a player tries to make the best baseball play (hit the ball into fair territory or catch a batted ball), but fails. As a result, it is virtually impossible to legislate these injury-risking acts out of the game because the players are not actually trying to do those acts.
This contrasts with football. Head trauma (or its risk) is part of virtually every play in which people deliberately run into one another at high speed. Which is to say, virtually every play in a football game. The object of football is for the defense to tackle or knock down the offensive player and for the offensive player to take those hits and keep moving up the field, often by running over the defender. And every play involves linemen blocking, wrestling, crashing, and falling over one another at the line of scrimmage. Much has been made of attempts to eliminate big, high hits on receivers going across the middle, quarterbacks in the pocket, or defenseless players in the open field. But studies suggest that head trauma is less a product of those big blows than of multiple and repeated sub-concussive blows–every block, every hit, every tackle is another small head trauma potentially building towards larger problems. And the risk is as much for the player doing the hitting as for the player being hit–confirmed victims of CTE include several offensive linemen and defensive backs.
This makes it both less difficult and more difficult for baseball to make itself safer. It is less difficult because concussions are not a likely result of baseball’s ordinary, intentional plays (say, a routine groundout to shortstop), while they are for football’s ordinary plays (say, a run up the middle in which the back is tackled by a defensive back after a five-yard gain while running through linemen battling at the line). Having eliminated intentional home-plate collisions, baseball need not outlaw much more on-field action in the name of safety because the basic game action does not present high concussion risks.
But that is also why it is more difficult: Baseball has no more risky plays to eliminate from the game in the name of safety.
Instead, baseball must focus its efforts somewhere other than how the game is played on the field. One move is to change equipment such that head injuries–when they occur on these incidental-but-unavoidable plays–will be less severe. These changes might include requiring players (particularly pitchers) to wear helmets in the field or requiring batting helmets to have face guards. Officials also might look to improve equipment–notably catchers’ masks and helmets–to better protect against head injuries on those plays. A different move is to change medical protocols for evaluating and treating head injuries and for determining when and how to clear players to return to the field following head injuries. While such changes do not prevent the initial head injury, they better treat it and they reduce the risk of a second head injury caused (or exacerbated) by a player coming back too soon.
No sport can be made completely safe. Concussions and other head injuries remain possible simply because projectiles are flying through the air and players are running around at high speed and in close proximity. The goal is to reduce risk as far as possible. Baseball’s advantage over football in this respect is that it is not built around intentional activities likely to cause head injuries. MLB thus can focus on reducing the harm when mistaken plays, and injuries, unavoidably occur, without having to fear altering the game’s essence.
