Yesterday I talked about David Wright looking silly in his huge new helmet. It looks bad. Dinged Corners gives us the rundown on these new melon protectors and also calls into question their impact on baseball cards of the future.
Well, today things took a step back for the team closest to my heart.
I took this handy little screenshot during today's game--thank you Fox Sports Detroit. In case this isn't painfully obvious, the old helmet (I won't say traditional, because you can tell that even that one is the modified version from recent years) is on the the left. Guillen wore it on Wednesday. On the right side is the new helmet.
Here, let me bring you in for a closer look:
What's that, still didn't get it? Let me simplify that for you:
In fact, during the broadcast, Rod pointed out that Guillen looked like the Great Gazoo, at which point Mario said that he was thinking the exact same thing. And its true. He does.
Meanwhile, Wright, perhaps shamed by his ridiculous helmet from the night before, opted for the two flap look yesterday.
This is, in my opinion, a million times better. This is the exact same enormous helmet, but with a second ear flap. Now Wright just looks like everybody that plays baseball up until the Minor leagues. Single Flap S100 = ridiculous looking mess, Double Flap equals OK. Now, the site where I keep pulling these Wright pictures from is called "The Fightins", which is about the Phillies. I don't know how I keep ending up on that site. However, I will say that even the Flyin' Hawaiian isn't immune to the look:
The unabashedly pro-phillies crowd said that this looks just fine. Wrong. These single flap helmets are a disaster.
Now, I understand safety, namely the desire for greater amounts of it, but these helmets look really absurd. I'm sure that we'll get used to them if they end up being required, but really, how can we respect our great heroes of the game if they look like characters from Wii Baseball or Virtua Fighter Kids? There must be a better way. Won't somebody please think of the baseball cards?
