Objectives: To determine the patterns of injury in youth baseball and apply the data to estimate the value of proposed safety equipment.
Design: Prospective population-based injury survey.
Participants: 2861 Little League baseball players (ages 7 to 18) for 140 932 player-hours.
Measurements: An injury was included in the data only if it was serious enough to require medical/dental care, caused missing a game, or disallowed playing a certain position. The injuries were subdivided into acute or overuse. The acute injuries were classified as either catastrophic, severe, or minor. Injuries were categorized according to mechanism, area injured, and whether the player was on offense or defense.
Results: There were 81 total injuries, of which 66 (81%) were acute and 15 (19%) were overuse. Of the acute injuries, 11 were severe and 55 were minor. The overall injury rate was .057 injuries per 100 player-hours. The severe injury rate was .008 injuries per 100 player-hours, of which 46% were ball-related injuries and 27% were collisions. The most frequent mechanism of injury was being hit by the ball, which represented 62% of the acute injuries. Of the 41 ball-related injuries, 28 (68%) occurred to players on defense. Of the 18 ball-related facial injuries, 16 occurred to players on defense.
Conclusions: 1) Little League baseball is a safe activity with a low injury rate and a particularly low rate of severe injury; 2) impact by the ball causes more than half the acute injuries, thus safety interventions should be directed towards decreasing these injuries, especially on defense; and 3) facemasks on batters can safely eliminate facial injuries to offensive players, but would only moderately reduce the incidence of ball-related facial injuries as most of these injuries are sustained by defensive players.