Associated Press
Tuesday, May 17, 2005

Charlie Muse, a longtime Pittsburgh Pirates executive who created baseball's modern batting helmet, died May 5 at the age of 87.

Mr. Muse died at Sun City Center, Fla., the Pirates said. He had lived there since retiring in 1989 after 52 years with the team -- many as the traveling secretary.

Mr. Muse was nicknamed "The Colonel" because of his all-business approach, and it was his military-like ability to improvise that helped speed the invention of the batting helmet.

Until former Pirates general manager Branch Rickey pushed in the early 1950s for the creation of a protective helmet, batters traditionally wore only their cloth caps to the plate. At the time, Rickey owned American Baseball Cap Inc., and he chose Mr. Muse to run the company and design a suitable helmet.

"It [the development] was more difficult than people would think," Mr. Muse told the Associated Press in a 1989 interview. "The players laughed at the first helmets, called them miner's helmets. They said the only players who would wear them were sissies."

Mr. Muse worked with inventor Ralph Davia and designer Ed Crick to perfect a helmet. They went through numerous designs before coming up with a comfortable plastic helmet that provided maximum protection above the ears, the most vulnerable area for batters.

The Pirates were the first team to wear the helmets in 1952 and 1953, and their adoption was speeded after the Braves' Joe Adcock was beaned so severely by the Dodgers' Clem Labine in 1954 that he was unconscious for 15 minutes.

Adcock said the helmet might have saved him from a severe injury, and the next day the Brooklyn Dodgers ordered all players in their organization to begin wearing helmets. Other teams quickly followed.

Mr. Muse was a minor league catcher and manager before and after serving as an Army captain in World War II and the Korean War. He occasionally donned catcher's gear even in his early seventies to catch spring training batting practice.