Brandon McCarthy won’t wear MLB’s protective hats for pitchers
By Bryan Rose
On September 5th of 2012, Brandon McCarthy was pitching for the Oakland Athletics where he was struck in the head by a comebacker off the bat of Angels infielder Erick Aybar.
McCarthy thought he was okay initially, but was rushed to the hospital for precautionary reasons and doctors quickly realized McCarthy needed emergency surgery to relieve pressure on his brain due to internal bleeding.
Now a member of the Arizona Diamondbacks, McCarthy (who suffered a seizure last June) worked with Major League Baseball and isoBlox to work on the new protective hats that debuted today, but the pitcher says he won’t wear them and doesn’t believe they are MLB-ready.
"McCarthy said he’d spent the last eight months working with MLB and 4Licensing Corporation subsidiary isoBlox, the company making the caps, but said he informed both parties before Tuesday’s announcement that he didn’t consider this particular cap to be “a major league-ready product.”“The technology is there,” he said. “It helps. It’s proven to help. But I don’t think it’s ready yet, as a major league-ready product. And I told them that. I told them that’s where it’s at.”The first problem, according to McCarthy, is that the new cap “doesn’t pass the eye test.”“It’s just too big,” he said."
The caps are pretty big and you don’t want to be uncomfortable on the mound, so it’s clear work still needs to be done on the hat. Still – it is a step in the right direction and pitchers do need some type of head protection as we’ve seen far too many scary injuries during the past few years.