Blog: Sadie Armstrong’s Take On Wearing a Face Mask… It Is Not All About YOU!

Cassadie “Sadie” Armstrong is a 5-foot-10 pitcher/infielder who plays for the Central Mass Voodoo 14U team and is a 7th grader (Class of 2023) from Portland, Maine and has a different take on wearing a face mask when she’s throwing in the circle.

In her latest blog for Extra Inning Softball, Sadie talks about her perspective on masks and how an incident involving her mother got her thinking about how the issue affects not just pitchers, but also the batters on the delivering end of the rocket shots off the bat.

An accomplished fastpitch player already, Sadie’s honors already have included being named a 2017 All American by USA Softball 12U, a member of USSSA Elite Select Futures and chosen as a Pre-Season Rookie by Under Armour Softball Factory thanks to a 62 mph screwball and a 61 mph dropball with consistent ball exit velocity speeds in the high 60s to low 70s.

In 2016, Sadie was named the Maine State Champion Pitcher for both Little League and USA Softball. She plays basketball for the 2017 AAU State Champion Firecrackers and off the field was her school’s French Student of the Year and is an honors violinist.

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There is a particular sound that you hear when a softball connects with the tissue and bone that compose a human face.  It is a sound that is difficult to describe, but it is instantly recognizable once you have heard it… it is a sickening thud.

Let me tell you how I know.

There was a girl on my all-star team who was physically advanced for her age.  She was one of the older and larger kids and was strong as an ox from years of dance lessons (who knew?).

However, she was new to the sport of softball.  Still, she had kind of naturally developed this swing that was powerful and quick and when she made solid contact with the ball, it flew.

My mom was the coach and she was sure that if this player just used her hips and got into her legs a little bit, she could really contribute on offense.

After about 15 minutes of working on this with her, the player had “use your legs” branded on her brain and it was hard for her to snap out of that mindset when my mom came out from behind the L-screen to work on bunting with her.

Sure enough, on the first soft, front toss my mom pitched to her, the now confident hitter back-loaded and swung the borrowed composite bat with every ounce of her being and lodged a perfectly hit line drive back the 20 or so feet directly at my mother’s surprised and unprotected face.

After being struck my mom instinctively grabbed her face and tried to reassure the batter that it was a fantastic hit and not to apologize.  All the while, mom was swaying and felt sick in the hot July sun.

She still stuck it out through practice and iced her face while barking orders at the players until the last kid left the field in an effort to shield the hitter from feeling anything other than pride in her performance.

Then, we went straight to the hospital.

At the hospital, my mother saw an x-ray of her cheekbone that looked like a car windshield after a rock hits it. She was also diagnosed with a concussion.

My mom was pretty grateful that she was not injured worse, but she still doesn’t see well out of her right eye.

My teammates knew that my mom would not be mad when she was announced as Coach “L-Screen” the rest of the season during tournaments because she was famous herself for her twisted sense of humor.  The humor helped us through our fear and alleviated the guilt that the batter had felt.

So, this is why I am writing about face masks today.

With high-profile incidents happening regularly in college and club softball and social media’s increasingly frequent posts about the safety benefits of face masks, everyone is questioning why anyone would ever not wear these inexpensive and easily accessed face masks, if it could prevent an injury like my mother’s or Paige Lowary’s or the multitude of other injuries of which we have all seen graphic photos.

But, I am not writing because of my mother or Paige Lowary or any other person on the receiving end of the batted ball.

I am writing because I think that as my mother demonstrated with her reaction, the most important reason to wear a face mask is not because of what could happen to yourself, but because of how the injury could affect another person’s life, irrevocably.

What if that line drive had hit my mother in the temple?  The young batter would have carried the grief and guilt associated with the consequences of an injury that she caused, regardless of whether there was fault:  my mother was responsible for keeping her own face safe and chose not to do so.

My teammate would not have felt better for that though—she would have had to live the rest of her life knowing that she had hurt someone seriously… or worse.

Yes, my mother made an error in judgment, but she also is older than kids playing ball today, obviously, and face masks were simply not worn when she played ball.  Interestingly enough, though, she would never let me take the field without a face mask.

In fact, when I guested at a tournament in California as a 10-year-old, a coach ordered me to remove my mask and my mother would not allow it (it was the only time I have ever heard her interfere with a coach’s instruction and I was almost as mortified by this as I am by some of these custom Etsy t-shirts she loves to wear to the games).

I used to think that the reason my mother insisted upon face masks for the players on the teams she coached, and especially for my siblings and me, was because she was overprotective or even because of her own experience.

Or maybe just because she just plain loved me.

Of course, that is part of her reasoning… but here is the real reason I wear a face mask and why I encourage you to wear one, also.

There is a real responsibility to grow the game of softball by those who play it and love it, through player retention.  Sure, kids might drop out of the game if they get hit, but that is because of the choice they made for themselves (you know, like wearing a seatbelt).

I owe it to the game to make sure that whenever a batter comes to bat, she is comfortable giving 100 percent knowing that it is not her fault if she nails the pitcher with a line-drive.

I don’t want a hard-hitting, quality player to be at risk of quitting this game as the result of the emotional trauma of injuring someone else.  I want to strike her out the next time she steps in the box.

I don’t want to hear the thud of a softball hurting anyone.  I want my senses to soak in fans cheering, the umpire yelling “Steeeeee-rike!” and “Play Ball.”

And I want to hear a different sort of thud to echo in my memory:  I want to hear the crack of the bat from an emboldened batter (so long as it is not off a pitch I threw!).