It depends whether you are talking about the modern batting helmets or some older models that were never required to be worn in competition. Experimental models were developed in the early years of the 20th century. However, Charlie Muse, an executive with the Pittsburgh Pirates, is credited with creating the modern helmet that was adopted by the team in 1952 and joined by other teams after a bad beaning incident in 1954. Major League Baseball required that players wear batting helmets beginning in 1971.
Early Helmets
The first crude batting helmet is credited to inventor Frank Mogridge. His creation resembled an inflatable boxing glove and wrapped around the batter's head. A Hall of Fame player, Roger Bresnahan, came up with a leather helmet in 1908 after he was badly beaned. Bresnahan, who caught for the New York Giants, also invented shinguards. But players were too macho -- or foolish -- to wear helmets until much later, even after Ray Chapman died in 1920 after being hit in the head by a Carl Mays pitch.
Charlie Muse
The advent of the modern helmet era arrived in the early 1950s when former Pirates general manager Branch Rickey began advocating for protective headgear. Mixing business with genuine safety concerns, Rickey, who owned the American Baseball Cap company, chose Muse to run the company and design a safety helmet. Working with an inventor and a designer, Ralph Davia and Ed Crick, Muse and his cohorts created some early prototypes that were not warmly received. "The players laughed at the first helmets, called them miners helmets," Muse said in an 1989 interview. "They said the only players who would wear them were sissies." Eventually, however, they came up with a plastic helmet that was comfortable and offered sturdy protection above the ears.
Adoption
Branch Rickey decreed that his Pirates would wear the helmets, and the Pirates became the first team to do so in 1952 and 1953. After Brooklyn Dodger Joe Adcock was knocked unconscious for 15 minutes by a pitch from Clem Labine in 1954, the Dodgers ordered all of their players to wear helmets and a number of other teams soon followed suit. Beginning in 1971, Major League Baseball made it mandatory for players to wear batting helmets.
21st Century
The hard plastic helmet created by Muse became the template for the modern baseball helmet. The most significant addition to Muse's helmet was the earflap. Ron Santo is credited with first wearing an earflap after his left cheekbone was shattered by a pitch in 1966. Some batters felt that earflaps were a distraction. But batting helmets with at least one earflap were made mandatory in the 1980s. The 2007 death of minor league first base coach Mike Coolbaugh, who was struck by a foul ball line drive, compelled Major League Baseball to require coaches to wear protective helmets as well as batters and catchers.
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