Thursday, March 20, 2014
Mandating pitcher headgear?
?Someone will bring it up, after Chapman.
And it doesn't make sense to have that as a rule. Why? Because each person has the right to protect himself as he sees fit, as long as it doesn't impact someone else. For example, there is a cost to the rest of us when someone drives without a seatbelt. Those people use a disproportionate share of common services (police, highways, hospitals) that we all paid into. In effect, the rest of us seatbelt-wearers are subsidizing the risk of the seatbelt-less driver. Our taxes are in essence our insurance premiums.
And insurance is THE way to affect behaviour. When the NHL mandated helmets, I can only imagine the true reason: the insurance company would otherwise offer them a higher premium if they didn't. And NOTHING affects a person's behaviour more than being told that he has to pay more for his risky behaviour.
So, if the insurance company is going to start charging a higher premium to MLB, but will offer a "safe pitching discount" to pitchers who put on protective headgear, then that'll be the first step. Administratively, no one wants everyone to have the option, so it'll be either league-wide mandated, or not.
As it stands, if you are losing one career a year due to lack of protection, that might be, say, a 20MM$ lifetime earnings payout, which spead across 1000 players is 20,000$ per player. That's how much more the premiums are due to lack of protective headgear for pitchers (in this totally made up illustration).
That's what you have to work out. You have to figure out at what point it'll hurt the players in the pocketbook before you try to save their heads. You may not like it, but that's how players (and people) behave.
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