Helmets

VERO BEACH, Fla. -- To protest baseball's new rule requiring base coaches to wear helmets, Larry Bowa threatened to march to his work station along the third base line wearing shin guards, a chest protector and a mask. "I'll really make a joke out of it," Bowa said. Bowa refused to wear a helmet in the Dodgers' exhibition opener Thursday at Holman Stadium and said he had no intention of doing so in the future.

Lots of people remember the career of former Buffalo Bills safety Mark Kelso because of the cartoonishly large helmet he wore. Thanks to that helmet, Kelso also can remember his career. Kelso, 44, is an administrator and assistant football coach at a Catholic high school in western New York. As a dad with two teenage sons who play, and as a pro football fan with a better understanding than most, he shudders when he sees a player knocked out the way Miami quarterback Trent Green was last Sunday.

Denver Haslam was skiing at Colorado's Arapahoe Basin three years ago when he lost control of his skis and flew headfirst into a large pine tree. The 50 mph crash shattered the college student's right shoulder and rib cage, broke his vertebra and left femur, split his kidney, ruptured his spleen, punctured his lungs and lacerated his pancreas. The ambulance nurse on the ride to Denver's St. Anthony Central Hospital called him a "talking corpse."

COLLEGE track star Kevin Dare shook the track and field world four years ago when he attempted to pole-vault 15 feet, 7 inches during a Big 10 track meet in Minnesota. The vault was no record attempt. It was not even Dare's personal best. The jump was sadly unforgettable because Dare missed and was killed when he landed head first in the steel takeoff box that vaulters use to catapult themselves into the air.

Finding the right helmet for a particular sport is just the first step in protecting your head from injury. The helmet must also fit properly. Wearing an ill-fitting helmet is almost as dangerous as wearing none at all, because a loose-fitting helmet can fly off in an accident. The following tips apply to most sporting and outdoor recreation helmets, according to safety groups, including the Bicycle Helmet Safety Institute in Arlington, Va.

Earlier this year in Anaheim, Mike Lee gingerly lowered himself onto a four-legged instrument of the pain, locked his hand on a rope around the one-ton beast, then withstood eight seconds of hell. When Lee finally dismounted from the snorting, high-kicking bull named Sheep Dip -- on his terms, not the bull's -- he was not wearing a cowboy hat as he soaked in the applause he'd generated by winning the Professional Bull Riders event.

The results are in. After a year's analysis of testimony from the National Transportation Safety Board's first-ever forum on motorcycle safety, the NTSB has finally made its recommendations. The biggest take-away: Helmets save lives. That message wasn't for riders but for state governments, which the safety board is encouraging to adopt universal helmet laws.

Almost every day at the Collision and Injury Dynamics lab in El Segundo, helmets are crashing into anvils. One day it could be full-face models. The next it's partials and shorties. Whatever the helmet, it all ends the same, with a loud bam as it slams to a stop, then bounces and comes to a standstill. Up close, it seems to happen fast, even if the helmet is moving just 13.4 miles per hour in its rush toward the flat metal anvil. According to the 1981 Hurt Study, 13.

The union representing rank and file Los Angeles police officers filed a labor grievance Friday demanding that officers be required to wear safety equipment while trying to control crowds in street marches and other gatherings. The grievance, filed with the city, stems from a recent protest in Westwood by people protesting against Israel's invasion of the Gaza strip. The Police Protective League says that LAPD commanders ordered officers not to don helmets and face shields out of concern that the gear would incite the crowd.