New Batting Helmets for Baseball and Softball

One team is looking to defend it’s conference championship and run to the final game of the season. The other is looking to fight out of the bottom of the conference. Auburn Softball started the new season last week with a win over #1 Oklahoma. Auburn Baseball’s year begins this weekend, as the young team looks to gain some needed experience. Two teams on rather different paths, but each sporting some new looks to the new year.

Courtney Shea sports the new softball batting helmets vs BYU in Mexico (photo via Ryan Greenwod)

The 2017 season was expected to be rather uneventful in regards to uniforms for Auburn’s two stick-and-ball sports. Softball received a full wardrobe of new uniforms last season, and, after breaking out some new alternates last year, there’s some rumbling that Baseball could see their own upgrades for next year.

The uneventful-ness of the season ended rather abruptly on the first day of the Softball season. With the Softball team out of the country, playing their first four games in Mexico, the Baseball team hosted a viewing party on their brand new scoreboard while having their own practice. With Auburn being the designated away team in their opening day matchup against defending champion Oklahoma, we got to see the Tigers bat first. And that’s when the new additions to the team’s aesthetic look was revealed.

Having previously worn plain matte blue batting helmets, the new bright orange-detailed helmets were extremely prominent. The new helmets once again feature the matte blue shell (which looks a bit brighter this year) with matte orange details on the bill and around the ventilation areas, as well as on the facemask. Auburn used to be rather simple with the design on the back of the helmet, having just an American flag and the player number last season. The new helmets more so resemble a football helmet, adding a SEC decal and having the Demarini logo (the helmet manufacturer) bold in orange rather than tone-on-tone as in the past.

Since Myers took over previous to the 2014 season, Auburn has now worn three different batting helmets. Well, one helmet had two different decals. Myers’ first year and a half saw the team wear a matte blue lid with a white outline of the AU logo. About halfway through the 2015 season, the decal changed over to an orange AU logo with a white outline, making the logo much more prominent. The year before the coaching change, Auburn actually wore two different batting helmets – one featured a white lid with a blue bill and AU logo outlined, the other a blue lid that fades to orange, again with an outlined AU logo. Here’s a look at the last few Auburn softball batting helmets, including a look at the pride stickers used back in 2012:

While sitting at Plainsman Park on Thursday watching baseball practice and the softball game, a new batting helmet was brought out for a little while. The new baseball helmets simply added an orange decal to the bill, but the additions proves worthwhile. The helmets mimic the orange-billed hat that the team wears with the majority of the available uniforms. The previous design – blue without the orange bill decal – will be worn when the Tigers wear the pinstripe uniforms. The baseball team has stuck with the same batting helmet design for the better part of a decade now, so the addition of the bill-decal is one of the bigger changes in recent years.

I personally don’t think we’re going to be seeing much more uniform worthy news out of these two programs this year. Again, softball just recently got four new sets, and baseball is set for some new threads in the coming years.

Regardless, you can be sure that any news will be covered here and on my Twitter account. For all your Auburn uniform news, be sure to follow the Auburn Uniform Database, like the AUD Facebook page, and follow me on Twitter for even more uniform news. Also, you can support this site by purchasing AUD t-shirts and other merchandise.