Injury shows need for pitchers' masks

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If you’re the parent of a high school softball pitcher, I have just four words for you today:

Buy her a mask.

Wait, let me add one more:

PLEASE.

As God is my witness, I wish every parent of every pitcher would have been at Evergreen Park on Wednesday to get an eyeful of one of the scariest things I’ve ever seen at a high school event.

In the top of the fourth inning, Evergreen Park sophomore Jayme Wazio was on the receiving end of a line drive off the bat of Homewood-Flossmoor slugger Maggie Kopas. Wazio suffered broken bones in her nasal cavity, a slight concussion and the scare of her life. She spent Wednesday night and most of Thursday at Christ Hospital in Oak Lawn.

You know what? Enough is enough. We don’t need any more of this.

Last year I wrote about Marist’s Michelle Vucsko, who was felled by a line drive at Ottawa. Vucsko was hit square in the mouth, knocking out two teeth. She also wound up with two black eyes because of the dental work needed to put the teeth back in place.

Vucsko, a senior, hasn’t returned to the mound because she is the starting shortstop and plans on doing the same at Lewis University next year. She said she read about Wazio’s injury in Thursday’s paper and said there’s no question what she’d do — and what Wazio should do when she returns to pitching.

“I’d definitely wear a mask,” Vucsko said. “She got lucky if she got her glove up a little bit. I didn’t even see the ball coming when it hit me. It comes at you really fast.”

Ridiculously fast. Too fast to take a chance. Pitchers are different from all of the other fielders because they aren’t always set and ready for a line drive after delivering a pitch.

They’re very, very vulnerable.

I wasn’t there when Vucsko went down. But the description I got of the scene by Michelle and her mother, Ginny, was right out of a horror movie.

Team attendants holding her head up as she was lying on the ground, a puddle of blood beneath her face. The mother, standing there terrified, being handed two of her daughter’s teeth. The race to the hospital, where an oral surgeon made her pretty again.

You know, girls like to be pretty.

“I think most of the reason that pitchers don’t like masks is the ‘how you look’ factor,” Vucsko said. “No one wants to be seen wearing one.”

Wazio admitted Thursday she resisted prodding from both her parents and her coaches to wear a mask because she didn’t like how it looked.

She said she won’t resist any more. When she returns to softball, it’ll be with a mask.

The IHSA needs to wise up and take whatever action is necessary to make masks for softball pitchers mandatory.

All high school coaches should get proactive about encouraging their pitchers to wear them.

Then there’s the ultimate line of defense. That would be you, moms and dads.

Don’t think when your daughter wrinkles her nose at the mention of wearing a mask, “Well, there’s hardly any chance it can happen ... ”

Realize it can happen. It did happen to Michelle Vucsko and Jayme Wazio.

When it happens, it hurts. It scars. It can be life-altering. It’s not worth the risk. Be the boss here.

PLEASE. Buy her a mask.

Tony Baranek can be reached at tbaranek@southtownstar.com or (708) 633-5947.