I hope baseball is still around when my kid is old enough to play

So right now I'm watching the Little League Softball World Series live from Alpenrose Dairy. Three of the infielders for the East team are wearing protective masks in the field! Essentially these things are like the masks umpires wear behind the plate. I tried to find a picture of it online, but I was unsuccessful. The announcers commented on them, saying that parents demanded that they wear them following the tragedies this summer. Apparently one girl died in routine infield drills in Michigan, and there was a minor league first base coach that was killed when a line drive hit him.


I agree that these things are tragic, but they are almost assuredly "freak" accidents. Furthermore, the first base coach was hit in the neck behind his ear. No facemask is going to prevent that. The point is, you can't change the gear everytime someone gets hurt in an accident. If a kid trips in the outfield and breaks his neck running into the wall, are we all of a sudden going to get rid of fences and just make a line on the ground that if the ball goes over it's a homerun? Are we going to make walls out of foam? Furthermore, facemasks and the like restrict your vision, making it more likely you'll get hit in the face. Sure it's padded, but I'll bet it still hurts pretty bad. I'd rather have the split second extra time to get out of the way than get beaned in the mask a couple dozen times. That'd make me quit playing sports a lot quicker than one bad hop knocking off my dome. Are we going to outlaw baseball all together? I think we're heading in that direction.

Maybe I will understand the need to protect children to an absurd degree once I become a father. Maybe I will hold my kid out of football practice because it's too dangerous. Maybe I will instruct my kid under no circumstances to slide into second base because he could break his ankle. Maybe I won't let him play basketball because the wood floor is hard when you land on it and he could get a hip pointer. The overreaction from tragic events always amazes me, and it concerns me because my child probably won't have the same options I did as a kid.

Does this concern anyone else, or am I way off base?