Baseball

Is baseball safe?

Yes, for nearly all players. Baseball is a low-contact sport with long periods of standing still, and its death rate shows it. US school records from the National Center for Catastrophic Sport Injury Research (NCCSIR) give about 0.2 deaths per 100,000 high-school players a season over 1982 to 2025, or about 0.04 micromortsMicromortA one-in-a-million chance of death. It lets you compare the risk of very different activities on one scale.More in the glossary per practice or game on our estimate. That is lower than football or basketball.

The catch is the ball. A baseball is hard and can travel fast, and almost every traumatic death in the sport comes from a ball or bat hitting a child's chest or head. Softball, played with a larger ball and mostly by girls and women in the US, has a similar pattern with fewer deaths.

How baseball players die

The US Consumer Product Safety Commission (CPSC) reviewed 88 reports of baseball-related deaths of children from 1973 to 1995. Ball impact caused 68 and bat impact 13. Of the ball deaths, 38 followed a blow to the chest and 21 a blow to the head.

The chest deaths are commotio cordis: a blow over the heart, landing in a narrow window of the heartbeat, sets off a fatal rhythm in a child with a perfectly normal heart. Children appear to be especially susceptible. In the US Commotio Cordis Registry, most cases happened during organised sport such as baseball, and 95% of victims were male.

The good news is survival. In the registry, only 10% of victims survived before 1994. From 2007 to 2012, 58% did, mostly because people started CPR and used defibrillators sooner.

In high school, the NCCSIR counted 18 traumatic deaths and 22 medical deaths, mostly cardiac, in 43 years. College baseball had 3 traumatic deaths and 7 medical ones. A study of all US college athlete deaths from 2003 to 2013 found 1 sudden cardiac death per 50,023 athlete-years in baseball, close to the college average.

How we worked out the micromorts

For high school, 0.09 traumatic plus 0.11 medical deaths per 100,000 players a season is about 2 micromortsMicromortA one-in-a-million chance of death. It lets you compare the risk of very different activities on one scale.More in the glossary a season. Over a season of about 50 practices and games, that gives 0.04 micromorts each. For college players, 1 sudden cardiac death per 50,023 athlete-years is 20 micromorts a year; about 56% of such deaths happen during exercise, and spread over about 150 sessions that is roughly 0.07 a session. Both are estimates and both are below 0.1 micromorts, the threshold for our lowest-risk band.

How often baseball players get injured

High-school baseball has one of the lowest everyday injury rates in US school sport. Games are about twice as risky as practice. The throwing arm takes the most punishment: shoulder and elbow injuries from pitching and throwing are the main problem in baseball, while ankle sprains and concussions lead in softball. Many injuries happen while fielding a batted ball.

Rare injuries can be severe. Baseball has the second-highest number of catastrophic traumatic injuries in US high schools after football, many of them from balls and bats to the head. For children, emergency departments treated 162,100 baseball injuries in 1995 alone, and the CPSC estimated that protective equipment could prevent or lessen more than a third of them (36%).

How to play more safely

1. Use a batting helmet with a faceguard. In 6.7 million Little League player-seasons, faceguards cut facial injuries by 35%.
2. Use reduced-impact balls for young children. They cut ball-related injuries by about 28% in the same study, and more in the youngest division.
3. Respect pitch counts and rest days. Half of young pitchers in one study had elbow or shoulder pain in a season, rising with pitches thrown.
4. Keep a defibrillator at the field and make sure coaches know CPR. For a ball to the chest, the first three minutes decide survival.
5. Use chest protectors that meet the NOCSAE commotio cordis standard for catchers and, if your league allows, for batters and young pitchers.
6. Watch the weather. When a storm approaches, move everyone to a building or car until it has passed; open fields are where lightning strikes people.

How we scored it

Fatality risk (97) is very low, at about 0.04 micromortsMicromortA one-in-a-million chance of death. It lets you compare the risk of very different activities on one scale.More in the glossary per high-school session. Serious injury risk (70) reflects low everyday injury rates but a real tail of head and chest injuries from the ball. Controllability (75) is high because faceguards, softer balls, pitch counts and defibrillators all work. Rescue (88) is close on most fields. Baseball scores above basketball and American football, close to pickleball.