I really wish leagues would mandate basic no-brainer safety precautions:
- Catchers: helmet w/facemask, and chest protector
- Pitchers: helmet w/facemask
- Baserunners: batting helmet
I'm in two different leagues and play on two fields. One is gorgeous astroturf that hardly ever produces an unpredictable bounce. This league is NSA. The other is a field that time forgot. There are 6" x 6" moats around the bases, stomped mudholes in the basepaths and around the pitcher's mound. The batter's box is nothing but quicksand. Making matters worse, it's smaller than regulation. It's ASA so people aren't - or at least don't appear to be - using utrip bats, but it's scary nonetheless.
I play 2B in the NSA league and OF in the ASA. I refuse to play SS or 3B in my ASA league because of the field conditions. Will not do it. I flat-out will not pitch. Don't love the game that much, sorry. Call me a p***y; I'll happily wear that badge along with all 32 of my teeth and both of my eyeballs. I won't even let my wife come to my ASA (co-ed) games anymore, because she kept getting recruited to catch when our females didn't feel like showing up. Every single game, there's at least one or two close calls thanks to a foul tip or an idiotic throw from the OF. It's easier to just leave her at home rather than tell my team "sorry, no catcher's gear = she doesn't play."
If I thought I could get away with it, I'd also mandate full masks at 2B, SS, and 3B, but that will never happen. It's just a shame that people put their pride so far ahead of their own safety. They're afraid of being criticized so instead they risk catastrophic injury - even their lives - so they don't have to endure sh*t from their teammates and opponents. I'm guilty of the same, or you'd see me at 2B with a mask. That's why it needs to be on the leagues and/or the associations: for crying out loud, just take it out of the players' hands once and for all, and we can stop reading stories about baserunners getting killed by errant throws from 3B, pitchers with softball-sized holes in the backs of their necks, and shortstops with dentures.