Pitching and Pitchers Discussion Safety Awareness

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With High School pitching and catching workouts well underway and Spring quickly approaching, I wanted to share with all of you a very important lesson learned. By doing this, my hope is that it will raise the awareness level of safety first.

My daughter was injured as a freshman while pitching for her HS JV team on a mound that had an object sticking up in her landing pad area. This was the last away game of the season. Landing on or around this object caused her foot to twist causing a significant amount of pain. She brought it to the attention of her coach during warmups, who in turn brought it to the attention of the umpire. My daughter was told by the umpire that there was nothing he could do about the situation and to ?deal with it?. She is now a Junior and is 16 days past her 4th (and hopefully last) surgery to correct the problem that was caused by ?dealing with it?.

If you are reading this and are a coach, umpire, pitcher or even parent, safety needs to come before anything else. If there is something that is hindering your player, your daughter or yourself from playing in a safe environment take steps to insure the problem is corrected or don?t play.

 

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OMG. ?I know that we all assume the risk of injury to our daughters in the sport, but this one seems so needless. ?Your post left me a little queasy ?. . . four surgeries during her high school years.

It's hard enough to get competitive girls to pull themselves when they are injured without having someone in authority telling them to "deal with it".

Did you ever find out what the object was?

 

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No, we did not ever find out what the object was. After it happened and I realized that there was a problem with her foot, I called the A.D. for the School that we were playing to make sure they fixed it. Her reply was that she knew work had been done on the field recently, but she thought it was done prior to our game?..obviously not. We think that it was either a chunk of concrete or metal from a shorter distance mound insert.

 

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Reading over this again, I have to wonder why the umpire didn't have the object removed. I know I've had games stopped until a hole caused by the pitcher's drag foot was filled in, let alone having something sticking out of the ground where their foot is landing. Makes angry just thinking about it....

Good luck with your daughter's recovery.

 

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I would be talking to a lawyer....

Joea?

 

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Yeah, makes me angry too. The whole thing was avoidable.

Joe A - We considered, but at this point so much time has passed I am not sure that anything could be done. If this surgery eliminates her pain, then we are happy.

 

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Whoops, I meant Johnnies :

 

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Safety is always a priority, but I'm a little disappointed that so many are calling this the umpire's fault.

Field maintenance is the responsibility of the home-field team. If an unsafe condition exists, that is the fault of their groundskeeper and, ultimately, the home team coach.

Your daughter's coach was made aware of the problem before the game. If safety was his priority, he had several options. He should bring it to the attention of the home team, since it is their responsibility to fix this.

If safety is the utmost concern, he could refuse to start the game until the problem is corrected. It must not have been an obvious enough problem that he had any qualms about allowing his player to pitch.

Did the umpire take a look at the problem area before saying there was nothing he could do? While that is not a wholely satisfying response, I have to wonder just how apparent the problem was.

After all, despite being looked at by your daughter, her coach, the umpire and probably others, the "mystery object" remained unidentified, in your own words.

As an umpire, if something like this is brought to my attention I'm going to go out the the pitching area and have a look. I'm probably going to have the home team work on the trouble spot to fill it in, smooth it out or whatever. But if the "mystery object" is so vague that it's identity can't even be determined by the coaches and players, what more can an umpire do?

Please know that I am sorry for your daughter's problem and am not trying to make light of her situation. It just bothers me to have folks say this is "the umpire's fault".

Safety is a shared responsibility for all game participants, players, coaches and umpires alike.

 

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Any field issues have to be brought up to the umpire and thus the home team. If anyone feels that there is a hinderance, i.e., something sticking up, and the home team has no maintenance or the umpire ignores it, and the girl gets hurt, that is grounds for a legal battle.

Bretman, IMHO, I think they thought the umpire ignored all possible remedies to the problem. Obviously you would have done the prudent thing. However, this sounds like a case of the blue saying "too bad, live with it". That is not right.

 

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flanagan9of9, you are correct. After hearing our coaches recount of the the situation, she said that the umpire did not take it seriously.

bretman, I think it is human nature to lean towards the umpire. He is (for lack of a better term) the governing body during the game. The buck stops there so to speak. That being said though, I think that each person involved could have caused a change in the course of action......woulda coulda shoulda

 

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Yes, I'll agree that it's human nature to blame the umpire.

Why not? We get blamed for just about everthing else! ;D

But, I would like to point out that, under high school rules from the Ohio High School Athletic Association (the true "governing body&quot, prior to the start of the game field conditions are the sole responsibility of the home team coach (see NFHS rule 4).

After the game starts, the umpires are the sole judges of field conditions (also outlined in rule 4).

If a visiting coach sees a hazard on the field that he feels is a danger to his players, it is his option to refuse to play. That will force the issue to be addressed and eliminate the chance of possible injury.

If a player is uncomfortable with the field conditions, there is nothing forcing them to participate (aside from peer pressure) and they may opt out if they choose.

If you, as a parent, are uncomfortable with field conditions when your child is playing, you are the ultimate "governing body" and have every right to remove your child from the perceived danger.

That two coaches, an umpire, the player and her parent were all aware of this "buried object" and chose to continue makes it hard for me to say that "it was the umpire's fault".

And, it also underscores your own point that safety is the resonsibility of EVERYONE on the field.

Here's hoping that everyone has a safe 2006 season!

 

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It seems that you have lost focus of the original post. Here is a copy of the main point of the post.

"If you are reading this and are a coach, umpire, pitcher or even parent, safety needs to come before anything else. If there is something that is hindering your player, your daughter or yourself from playing in a safe environment take steps to insure the problem is corrected or don?t play. "

This was not intended to slam OHSAA who isn?t involved. We have since moved.

 

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Nope. No focus lost.

I didn't take your post as OHSAA bashing. The only reason I mentioned them was to illustrate that there are guidelines in place to correct poor field conditions and those guidelines show that the umpire is not always "the final authority".

I thought that my post was clear in stating, several times, that safety should be a priority for ALL participants.

It would seem that I agree almost 100% with everything you've posted. The one single point I didn't agree with was that the umpire is the "final authority" and has the "ultimate responsibility" in regards to player safety.

I tried to list examples of how each and every participant could have prevented this injury. That NONE of them did would lead me to say that EACH of them bears a share of the blame.

Doesn't that seem to agree 100% with what you've quoted above as the "main point" of your post?

 

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It seems that we are both basically saying the same thing. One is from the umpire point of view and one from the parental point of view. I do know that our JV coach, daughter and ourselves learned a great deal through this experience. As for the opposing school and umpire, I can only hope.

 

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I had a similar situation when I was coaching baseball. It was brought to our attention by the visiting teams pitcher. There was another pitching rubber used for the younger 13U teams that was causing problems. I give the umpire credit. He stopped the game until we could remove it and make the mound safe. Safety should ALWAYS come first. Sorry to hear about your daughter and I hope everyone will always remember to keep safety first.

 

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I call a lot of summer games on fields that are shared by different age groups, so I've seen this exact same problem a few times. Each time I've stopped the game to have the problem fixed.

But I still have to wonder, not from a safety standpoint but from a "wake up and smell the coffee" standpoint, about the two teams that were on the field practicing for an hour before the game even started.

Funny how they don't notice this stuff until one of their pitchers has just issued three straight bases-on-balls then, all of a sudden, it becomes an issue!

cdmx5, you are probably right about me seeing this "from an umpire's point of view"- even though I'm also a coach and player.

When I see one post saying "sue the bums" and another saying "blame the umpire" it does tend to make me a little nervous!

 

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Bretman - This type of thing happens frequently as you indicate above. We also had a very similar incident with our middle daughter too. She after having witnessed what could happen long term brought the problem to her coach?s attention. Who then told the umps. Everyone was very accommodating. In this situation, it also was an away game. The pitchers mound had a large rubber mat underneath to protect from erosion. This mat worked its way up and was causing her to slip upon landing. There was a mat at the batters box too that had also worked it?s way up. Both were causing slipping and/or tripping. Anyway it wasn?t a quick easy fix, but they went to work on it immediately. We later found out that our 8th grade team played at that field the day before. The 8th grade pitcher didn?t mention the problem, just ?sucked it up? and played. She ended up spraining her ankle and couldn?t pitch for our travel team?s tournament the following weekend. 2 identical situations, 2 very different outcomes?

My guess is in the cases of the teams that don?t mention problems until their level of play suffers is because they don?t want to be whiners and/or like the above they try to ?suck it up? and play.