4
THE UNIVERSITY DAILY KANSAN
WEDNESDAY, JANUARY 29, 2014
PAGE 11
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QUOTE OF THE DAY
"I absolutely think it's worth consid-
ration at least when I get to spring
training to try it out no matter how
inconvenient it might look"
-Tampa Tribune
FACT OF THE DAY
The average speed of a line drive when it reaches the pitchers mound is 83 mph
CBSnews.com
TRIVIA OF THE DAY
u. How many pitchers were hit in the head by line drives in the past 6 seasons?
A:12
-ESPN.com
ang
THE MORNING BREW
MLB pitchers finally approved for head protection
Imagine standing on a mound of dirt, throwing baseballs at more than 90 miles per hour for a living. It's a routine inning, until a 6-foot-4, 250 pound giant, handling a bat that's as long as your leg, walks up to the plate. He's standing 60.5 feet directly ahead of you. He bashes each pitch at a speed as fast, if not faster, than the speed at which you threw. Most of his hits cause the baseball to fly up and into the outfield, some speed past you and bunny hop off the grass - sometimes it comes screaming right back toward your face.
You calculate about one-third of a second to finish your throwing motion and get out of the way of one of these screamers. If that's not long enough, your protection from a line drive hurling toward your face is simply your hat and the glove on your hand.
Pitchers have one of the most fearsome jobs in professional sports. But until today, they weren't afforded league-approved head protection.
Welcome to the reality of a major league pitcher.
Licensing company, 4Licensing Corporation, won league approval of a
By Nick Chadbourne sports@kansan.com
protection cap for use in the 2014 season, the first such approval for pitchers protection in league history, according to ESPN. The hat uses half-inch to one inch thick padding to protect the front and side of pitchers' heads from line-drives. The approval comes after years of increasingly brutal occurrences of pitchers getting nailed by line-drives, climaxing near the end of the 2012 season when pitcher Brandon McCarthy suffered life-threatening injuries from a line-drive to his head. The hat will be optional for pitchers while research continues.
One in every 300,000 pitches results in a line-drive toward a pitcher's head, or about two to three occurrences per season, according to a recent Forbes article.
The phenomenon isn't new, but the advent of modern weight-training and team nutritionists, along with seemingly endless cases of performance-enhancing drug usage, increases the potential for serious, even life-threatening, injuries from line-drives toward pitchers.
MLB Commissioner Bud Selig's lackadaisical attitude toward the issue is frustrating to look back on. He said in 2000 that "nothing could be done"
It should not have taken five incidents in a five-month span between 2012
to protect pitchers from line-drives, according to FoxSports.com writer Ken Rosenthal. As if putting foam-polymer inside of hats, similar to football helmets, was something beyond the realm of possibility. If McCarthy succumbed to his brain injuries in 2012, Selig would've been roasted by the media for MLB's lack of preventative measures and foresight.
and 2013 to provide pitchers with a basic protection for their heads. Nor should it have taken the near death of a pitcher to stimulate efforts to find acceptable protection. The feet-dragging only served to reinforce the perception that baseball struggles to modernize itself
It's a bad perception for a sport that's desperately trying to recapture its title as America's pastime.
gles to modernize itself. bad perception for a sport
Today's approval signals a step in the right direction, but it's disappointing the change took this long to implement. It's hard not to feel that Selig and company whiffed on this one.
Edited by Cara Winkley
This week in athletics
Wednesday
Men's Basketball
Iowa State
8 p.m.
Lawrence
Thursday No Events
Friday
Women's Tennis
Nebraska
4 p.m.
Lincoln, Neb.
Saturday
Swimming and Diving Arkansas 11 a.m. Fayetteville, Ark.
Sunday
Men's Basketball
Texas
3 p.m.
Austin, Texas
Women's Basketball
Texas Tech
4 p.m.
Lubbock, Texas
Women's Tennis
Liberty
11 a.m.
Lawrence
Monday No Events
Tuesday
NFL
Men's Basketball
Baylor
6 p.m.
Waco, Texas
Super Bowl increases chances of sex-trafficking
ASSOCIATED PRESS
WASHINGTON—In a chamber at standing-room-only capacity, with photographs of young victims flashing from TV screens, a House of Representatives panel held a hearing Monday to raise awareness about human trafficking. Of immediate concern among the legislators is this Sunday's Super Bowl,
an event that is thought to heighten the demand for forced prostitution.
"We know that from the past, any sports venue - especially the Super Bowl - acts as a sex-trafficking magnet," said Rep. Christopher H. Smith, R-N.J., chairman of the House subcommittee on Africa, global health, global human rights and international organizations.
The Super Bowl, America's most-watched sporting event and one that cities across the nation compete to host, has increasingly faced scrutiny as a draw for human trafficking and forced sex labor. Although no definitive figures exist, advocates argue that the large influx of men and the party atmosphere that surrounds the event make it a hot spot for individuals who
exploit women and children.
"Major sporting events like the Super Bowl create a unique surge in demand for sex services," Carol Smolenski told the panel, stating that 100,000 children across the country are victims of forced sexual labor. Smolenski, executive director of ECPAT-USA, an anti-trafficking organization, said the Super Bowl is an easy target for both the supply
and demand of forced sex labor because of the accessibility of hotels and transportation networks.
Statistics presented at the hearing depict human trafficking as a major industry in America's underground economy. An estimated $9.5 billion is generated annually, said Rep. Ann Wagner, R-Mo. The average forced-sex laborer is between the ages of 13 and
14, said Rep. Mark Meadows,
R-N.C.
New York state, host of this year's Super Bowl, is one of America's worst offenders. The Empire State has the fourth-highest number of incidents of human trafficking in the nation, according to the National Human Trafficking Resource Center, trailing only California, Texas and Florida.
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