UniWatch has a great look at the new baseball helmet innovations:

In case you missed it, Uni Watch is referring to the new batting helmets that were worn during the game. The new lids featured a molded crown, side vents, back vents, and slightly elongated earholes. And for good measure, they slapped the All-Star Game logo on the back (a bit of logo creep that Uni Watch is willing to forgive, since the new helmets, rather surprisingly, didn't feature the MLB logo). Think of it as the baseball version of the Riddell Revolution.

Although a few players stuck with their regular helmets -- sometimes for rather obvious reasons -- Uni Watch estimates that about 85 percent of the players gave the new design a test drive.

Interestingly, there was no advance promotion for the new helmets (not that Uni Watch was aware of, at least), and all the MLB and Rawlings bigwigs were still in transit from Detroit as Uni Watch's deadline arrived, so the full story behind the new design -- including whether it will be used for regular-season games -- will have to wait. But it's worth noting that this type of helmet isn't exactly new: There's an inexpensive Rawlings version that's been floating around the mlb.com site for a while now, and Wilson makes something fairly similar.

I remeber when I was a kid plying football I thought that while they gave great head protection, helmets were extremely cumbersome and limited one's sense of the game dramatically. While everyone is equally disadvantaged -- except the kicker who has a weirdo helmet -- it's always seemed to me football helmets are an area ripe for innovation to make them lighter and less intrusive (more like, say, lacrosse helmets).