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MLB pitchers may have option to wear helmets in 2014

Pete Rose and other decryers of player safety may have another blow struck against them.

Diamondbacks pitcher Brandon McCarthy went on a podcast called "The Buzz" and revealed that pitchers may be wearing helmets as early as this coming season.

"They're coming," McCarthy said of the headgear. "From everything I know they'll be available this year. I don't believe they're going to be mandatory. Actually, I'm almost certain they won't be mandatory."

Now, everybody would love to take the skull-cracking comebackers out of the game. And someday, when pitchers are hurling from inside a protective, transluscent bubble on the mound, we'll look at images from 2014, in which pitchers are wearing prototype helmets, and we'll laugh and laugh.

Until then, it's nice that baseball's doing what it can to keep severe pain and injury out of the game, even if the precautions appear foreign initially.