“I’ve been hearing a lot of things — that you look ugly, that the hat is too big, too huge, too fat,” said Alex Torres in an interview with The New York Times on the isoBLOX baseball cap.
“I don’t care about how it’s going to look. I want to be safe,” the San Diego Padres reliever added.
Safer Sports Technologies looks to solve this dilemma by asking the question: can you look good on the mound, but still be safe?
For over a year, Safer Sports Technologies has been selling a performance head guard for pitchers, most notably worn by Houston Astros pitcher Collin McHugh. The head guard is a padded, rectangular piece of carbon fiber that can be placed within the sweat liner of a baseball cap. The plate is made to protect the crown and temple of the pitcher, made vulnerable by the rotation of throwing.
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McHugh had worn something similar when a former high school teammate gave him a padded piece of Kevlar to stick in his baseball cap.
But now Safer Sports Technologies is offering an updated version of their head guard, which aims to be more affordable, especially for youth baseball players. They have launched a Kickstarter campaign, hoping to raise $5,000, and you can order a head guard via pre-sale.
Still, there is no definitive evidence for which model works better—the Safer Sports Technologies head guard or the isoBLOX cap. The isoBLOX stretches from ear to ear with patented padding, the material of which they have kept a secret, while the Safer Sports Technologies has one to two plates of strategically placed carbon fiber.
Two aspects are for certain, though—the carbon fiber plate is much lighter, and it keeps with the traditional look of baseball caps.