The History of Batting Helmets

The batting helmet was not made a mandatory piece of protective baseball equipment for hitters until 1971. The batting helmet is worn to protect batters from injury in case a pitched ball should strike them in the head, but despite the common sense of this the batting helmet was slow to catch on.

  1. Bresnahan

    • The first batting helmet was the idea of Roger Bresnahan, who played for the New York Giants. Bresnahan was hit in the head by a pitch and put in the hospital, so he constructed a crude helmet out of leather in 1905, but very few players would wear it because they feared ridicule by their peers.

    Chapman

    • In 1920, Ray Chapman of the Indians was struck in the head by a pitch thrown by Yankee pitcher Carl Mays--Chapman died the following day. Rather than demand that players use helmets, Major League Baseball instead banned the use of the spitball by pitchers and told umpires to make sure all dirty balls were put out of play, reasoning that Chapman had a hard time seeing the pitch that hit him.

    Reese and Medwick

    • On March 7th, 1941 two future Hall of Famers, Pee Wee Reese and Joe Medwick, wore batting helmets designed by doctors from John Hopkins University in a Brooklyn Dodgers spring training contest. The two players had suffered from being hit in the head the prior season and wore the helmets, but still few other players would use them.

    Muse

    • Pittsburgh Pirates general manager Branch Rickey told another Pirates' executive named Charlie Muse to invent a more suitable batting helmet in the early 1950s. Muse worked with an inventor by the name of Ralph Davia and a designer named Ed Crick and came up with a hard plastic helmet that protected players' heads.

    Adcock

    • The Braves' Joe Adcock survived a terrible beaning in 1954 while wearing this new type of helmet. Other players then finally began to use it.

    Montgomery

    • It was not until 1971 that MLB made it mandatory for players to wear a batting helmet. However, anyone who was already in the major leagues at the time had the option of not wearing one. The last man to bat without a helmet was Boston Red Sox back-up catcher Bob Montgomery, on September 9th, 1979.