Can A Baseball Break Bones? (5 Factors & Warnings)

A thought that has crossed everyone’s mind who is watching or playing baseball is what would happen if you get struck by a baseball. Can it break bones? In this article, I will dive deep into the subject, show some examples, potential serious cases, and some interesting data!

Before diving deeper into the subject, can a baseball break bones?

In general, a baseball can easily break a bone. However, this widely depends on the baseball’s speed, the bone and angle it hits, age, previous bone problems, and potential bone sicknesses such as osteoporosis.

As you can see, the answer to whether a baseball will break a bone varies by many factors. But it is totally possible and even likely that a baseball breaks a bone if struck the right way. Now, to understand the different variables and how they can be seen in real life, let’s take a closer look at them!

What Affects If a Baseball Will Break a Bone?

As said, many reasons affect whether your or someone else bone will break when it gets struck by a baseball. Below I have listed some of the most common causes.

1. Speed of the Baseball

First of all, baseball’s speed is one of the most crucial things affecting whether it will break a bone and how bad.

The difference is huge whether you get struck by a baseball at the speed of 50mph or 90mph. What determines the speed of the ball is the throwing power of the pitcher or the swing power of the batter.

The more force they can generate on the ball, the faster the ball with go, and thus, the more severely it will damage the bones and things around it.

2. Bone & Angle the baseball will hit

Did you know that there are 206 bones in the human body? The bones that make up the skeleton are the structure for our bodies, and you can better believe that there are many different kinds of bones of different shapes, thicknesses, and durabilities.

For example, the most delicate and smallest bone on our bodies is the lacrimal bone, which is located on our face, specifically at the front part of the medial wall of the orbit.

The strongest bone in the human body is the femur bone. The femur bone can carry 30 times the weight of your body and is almost as hard as concrete. You can find the femur bone in your thigh, which spans the hip and knee joints to hold an upright posture that supports the skeleton.

When we add the worst angle, the baseball can come at your body part, whichever applies to the specific body part; the damage can be many times over.

3. The person’s age who the baseball hits

The person’s age who gets stuck with the baseball will also affect how bad the outcome will be.

Aging changes your bones in addition to many other things. When you become older, your bones will become more brittle, making them break more easily. Thus, when you could have withstood the hit with no broken bones when you were 20, for example, the story will be different when you are 40 and even worse when 60 and so on.

When aging, the loss of bone tissue, bone density, and fluid in intervertebral discs changes on the bone. This starts to happen when the pace of losing the mentioned features is faster than forming them.

Aging is also responsible for many diseases, which takes us to the next subject.

4. Bone sicnesses e problmes

The most known bone diseases are osteoporosis and osteogenesis imperfecta. Note that these aren’t the same thing, even though they are often confused with each other.

Osteoporosis: Is a disease-causing loss of bone density. However, this doesen’t mean that your bones have anything abnormal in construction. Osteoporosis causes bone fractures more easily as the bones are less dense, meaning weaker and brittle. The worst cases of osteoporosis can cause bone fractures from heavy coughing or bending over.

Osteogenesis imperfecta: Also known as OI and brittle bone disease, is a genetic disease resulting in abnormal bone formation. For example, OI can cause bending in bones, drastic size differences, and bone fractures considerably easier. Brittle bone disease causes these symptoms because of the body’s negative ability to produce collagen, a protein in the body’s connective tissue. People with severe Osteogenesis imperfecta can’t walk yet to play baseball.

If a baseball player were to have either of these diseases, they would shatter in a much greater way than ones who doesen’t have these diseases. However, people with these diseases are instructed not to play demanding sports that can cause bone fractures, especially as easily as baseball.

5. Previously fractured bones

You might have heard that it will heal back stronger when you break a bone. There is some truth to that, but in the long run, it isn’t so.

A broken bone will generate extra bone around the fractured location to prevent further harm. However, it will diminish in the long run, and when you can operate like before, it might be as good as it once was but likely weaker than the equivalent bones around it.

Thus, if you get hit by a baseball that once was broken, it is slightly more likely that it will break when compared to a similar bone never broken before.

From the video below, you can see how getting hit by a baseball affects different body parts, among other things. One thing is certain; a baseball will break bones if hit accordingly.

Does It Hurt to Get Hit With a Baseball?

As you can break bones with a baseball, it’s obvious that it can hurt if you get hit by one. However, how much it hurts is a different story.

If you get struck by a baseball that is either pitched or batted, it will hurt very badly. How much it will hurt widely depends on the bone struck and the baseball’s speed. The average pitch speed in MLB baseball is around 90mph, whereas the typical bat speed is between 70-85mph.

For example, if you get stuck to your head by a batted ball, it will not only hurt like never before, but there is the risk of serious injuries and even death. On the other hand, if you get struck by a slow pitch to your thigh, it will probably hurt but not so much that you can’t walk it off.

Nonetheless, baseballs are very hard, and the velocity is often fast, which is a combination of pain and agony if you are unfortunate enough to get struck by one.

That’s why always use the necessary safety equipment so you don’t get irreversible injuries from something that could have been avoided.

What Happens If You Get Hit In The Face With a Baseball?

Broken bones and pain. It becomes clear that nobody would want to get struck by a baseball. Let’s take things further to the worst possible scenario: getting struck by a baseball in the face. What could happen?

If a baseball strikes you to your face, it can and most likely will break bones around the areas of eye sockets, nose, teeth, cheekbones, chin, sinuses, or even the skull. Getting hit by a baseball on your face can be extremely dangerous and, in worst cases, lead to death.

The face and head are some of the most important, if not the most important, areas of your body, which can cause serious physical and mental damage if hit with great force.

As you know, your vision, hearing, sense of smell, and taste are used by the head and brains, and even when a baseball won’t likely remove any of these senses, it can damage your brain and damage any of these areas.

As you can see from the video below, getting struck by a baseball coming in at that speed would most definitely do some serious damage, even death. You can be the judge for yourself; what do you think would have happened if Evan Longoria didn’t catch the ball right in front of the reporter’s face?

How Much Kinetic Energy Does a Baseball Have?

Kinetic energy is an interesting subject often measured in Joules (J). One Joule is the same as 1kg m2 / s2, which might be easier to understand.

We need to understand how it is calculated before moving on to the different kinetic energy amounts a moving baseball has. You get the kinetic energy of a moving object with the following formula;

 K.E. = 1/2 m v²

Kinetic Energy is directly proportional to mass and the square of the magitude of velocity.

Now, we will need the mass of a baseball and the square of the magnitude of velocity. A baseball weighs approximately 5ounces that is 141grams.

Below you can see how much a baseball weighing 5ounces has kinetic energy when traveling at different speeds.

Baseball Speed	Baseball Kinetic Energy
25mph (40km/h)	8.9J
50mph (80km/h)	35.4J
70mph (113km/h)	69.4J
90mph (145km/h)	114.7J
100mph (161km/h)	141.6J

It’s fascinating to see that the amount of kinetic energy the baseball will have increases the faster it goes. For example, when comparing a baseball traveling at 50mph and 70mph, the kinetic energy increases by 37Joules.

However, when we go from 70mph to 90mph, where the speed difference is the same, the kinetic energy increased is more which is 45.3Joules.

The trend will go on, and the faster the object will go. Therefore, the baseball’s speed will have a tremendous effect on how bad it will hurt and whether it will break any bones.

Has Anyone Died From Hit By a Pitch?

As getting hit by a baseball can be severe, the ultimate question would be whether anyone has died from getting hit y a pitch.

Ray Chapman, a Cleaveland Indians shortstop, died in 1920 when he got hit by the head from a pitch thrown by a New York Yankees pitcher Carl Mays, resulting in death from the injury only 12 hours later. Ray Chapman is the only person in history who has died in the MLB.

That is a moment that has been stuck with baseball fans ever since it happened. Luckily, these accidents are very rare, even outside of the MLB. However, people have died in the lower level of baseball as well.