[blindkid] Fw: [Jobs] FW: [Missouri-l] He’s legally blind and a successful hitting co ach

Fri Apr 17 17:51:38 UTC 2009

Wow, that was very cool.  Maybe we'll have him as a speaker some day.
Carol

At 03:35 PM 4/14/2009, you wrote:
>Hello:
>
>      With the recent posts on baseball, I 
> thought the following would be of interest.
>
>Regards,
>
>Robert Jaquiss
>
>----- Original Message -----
>From: Peter Altschul
>To: leadership at acb.org ; employment at acb.org ; 'Jobs for the Blind'
>Cc: 'Jamal Mazrui' ; dbmusic at cybernix.net ; 
>'Dave Wilkinson' ; 'Ernest Solit' ; 'Daly,Connie'
>Sent: Monday, April 13, 2009 10:47 PM
>Subject: [Jobs] FW: [Missouri-l] He’s legally 
>blind and a successful hitting coach
>
>
>
>
>
>
>
>--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
>
>He’s legally blind and a successful hitting coach
>By ERIC OLSON, AP Sports Writer Apr 11, 7:43 pm EDT
>
>
>
>  OMAHA, Neb. (AP)—Mark Wetzel can’t tell you 
> exactly what his wife or children look like.
>He can, however, tell you how to hit a 95 mph fastball.
>
>Even one of baseball’s greatest hitters, Hall of 
>Famer Tony Gwynn, has taken the advice of the 
>man known simply as the “blind guy.”
>
>Left legally blind 45 years ago by macular 
>degeneration, the 59-year-old Wetzel has 
>immersed himself in the study of the swing for the last two decades.
>
>His “laboratory,” as he calls his training 
>facility, is just a few paces from the front 
>door of the home he shares with wife, Judy, on 
>some land on the north edge of Omaha.
>
>Three nights a week and Sunday afternoons, he 
>breaks down the swings of some 50 students, 
>little leaguers to pros who travel a winding 
>road through the woods and turn off on a gravel 
>driveway leading past a fishing pond to the red 
>steel building that houses two batting cages.
>
>Wetzel knows his students’ swings, but not their faces.
>
>He prods, encourages, tweaks.
>
>He usually gets results.
>
>Some have compared his logic-defying talent to that of a horse whisperer.
>
>“Guys ask me all the time how he does it. I tell 
>them I have no idea,” said Matt Macri, who 
>became Wetzel’s first pupil to reach the majors 
>when he appeared in 18 games for the Minnesota Twins last year.
>
>Macular degeneration blurs the center of the 
>field of vision, but Wetzel is able to use his 
>peripheral vision to see shapes and outlines. “That’s where I live,” he said.
>
>Wetzel said when he looks straight ahead, he can 
>see two fingers held 2 feet from his face, but the view is cloudy.
>
>Instead of looking directly at the batter he’s 
>instructing, he turns his head and watches him out of the corner of his eye.
>
>“I can tell where the knob of the bat is, and I 
>know exactly what your elbow is doing and where 
>your head is going to go next,” Wetzel said. “I 
>see that outline, and I connect all the dots.
>
>“You take your great running backs and point 
>guards, and they have great peripheral vision. 
>I’m not so sure they don’t see the body move in 
>a different way than the average person does. 
>You can almost see the body move before the body goes there.”
>
>Of course, there are those who condescend or 
>doubt that a blind man could really teach hitting.
>
>The folksy, self-deprecating Wetzel brushes it off.
>
>Asked why he teaches hitting, he says, “Well, do 
>you think I should teach catching? I’m only good 
>for two or three knocks to the head a day.”
>
>Wetzel said he took to heart his grandfather’s 
>lectures about not allowing blindness to stop him from doing what he wants.
>
>So he yuks it up about the days he drove a truck 
>for the portable-toilet business he once owned. 
>That’s right. He drove, but not for the last 15 
>years. And don’t ask whether he had a license.
>
>“I would go to great lengths to never turn left. 
>That meant you had to turn against traffic,” he said, letting out a big laugh.
>
>He also used to be a hunting guide, but he had 
>to quit that when he couldn’t see birds’ silhouettes against the sky anymore.
>
>Baseball was his boyhood passion, and it remains 
>so. He makes a living charging $90 for a one-hour lesson.
>
>He is, to be sure, doing what he wants.
>
>He points out that he’s had eight of his players 
>drafted the past six years, and some 30 have 
>gone on to Division I college baseball since he started teaching 22 years ago.
>
>“It’s a little bit unorthodox because of his 
>vision problems,” said Gwynn, who became coach 
>at San Diego State after retiring from the 
>Padres in 2001. “He gets right in there, and he totally gets it.”
>
>Wetzel holds once- or twice-a-month gabfests on 
>the phone about the batter’s art with Gwynn and 
>former major league hitting coach Merv 
>Rettenmund. Wetzel met both through a friend, 
>Omaha native and former Padres pitching coach 
>Dan Warthen, who’s now with the New York Mets.
>
>Wetzel earned Gwynn’s respect shortly after they 
>met about 10 years ago. Wetzel was visiting with 
>him in the dugout before a Padres’ game in St. 
>Louis, and the conversation turned to Gwynn’s swing.
>
>Wetzel pointed out a flaw, something about the 
>way Gwynn was pushing off with his back foot.
>
>A career .338 hitter and winner of eight 
>National League batting titles, Gwynn was stunned.
>
>“Major league hitters have egos, and my first 
>thought was, ‘Who is this blind guy to tell me 
>what I’m doing wrong?”’ Gwynn recalled.
>
>Gwynn said he thought about what Wetzel said, and discovered Wetzel was right.
>
>“I decided to go to work on it, and I got it fixed,” he said.
>
>Wetzel first had trouble seeing when he was 11. 
>He was a good ballplayer, but he started 
>misjudging flies in the outfield and striking out.
>
>He was legally blind three years later. His playing days were over.
>
>He worked a variety of jobs as he got older. 
>There were the portable-toilet and hunting-guide 
>businesses, and he trained dogs and operated a kennel.
>
>Baseball came back into his life when his son, 
>Lance, started playing in the 1980s.
>
>Wetzel wanted to help out with Lance’s team but was shooed away.
>
>“They wanted to put me on (soda) pop duty, or 
>help the moms line up the snacks for after the games,” he said.
>
>Despite his blindness, he thought he could teach 
>hitting better than Lance’s coaches. He would 
>watch instructional videos by sitting with his 
>nose pressed up against the TV. Within a year or 
>two, fathers started to bring their sons to see the blind guy.
>
>Wetzel has come up with a philosophy that places 
>a premium on the batter’s ability to relax. 
>Without prompting, he talks about shifting 
>weight to the front of the feet through 
>incremental chin movements. He touts the 
>“million-dollar inch,” referring to the front 
>elbow’s alignment over the belly button, and the 
>importance of “centering the ball.”
>
>“When I was a player, and even when I was 
>coaching, I never thought anyone could teach 
>hitting unless he had done it himself,” 
>Rettenmund said. “Mark Wetzel proved me wrong.”
>
>Wetzel’s students come from near and far. Macri, 
>who grew up 130 miles away in Des Moines, Iowa, 
>started taking lessons from Wetzel 10 years ago 
>when he was a high school freshman. Macri lives 
>in Chicago in the offseason, but still makes it 
>to Wetzel’s “laboratory” once or twice a winter.
>
>A new student, 9 years old, comes in from Kearney, about 180 miles away.
>
>“I think the good lord,” Wetzel said, “has given me a gift.”
>
>On the Net:
>
>Mark Wetzel Web site: http://www.blindguyhitting.com/
>
>Play Ball! — Sign up for Yahoo! Sports Fantasy Baseball '09 today.
>
>Updated Apr 11, 7:43 pm EDT
>
>
>
>
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