[Ohio-talk] Take Me Out To The Ballgame

[Eric Duffy]

I wrote this story for our Kernel book series   twelve years ago. 
 One week from today baseball is back in Cincinnati. This story appeard in Lessons of the Earth.

Take Me Out To the Ball Game

By Eric Duffy

I am one of eight children, the only one with a disability in my family. My parents were devastated to learn that I was blind. They had no hope for any sort of a future for me, but as a child I never thought of myself as particularly different from sighted kids. I couldn’t do some things very well, and I knew that, as we grew older, some of those things would be more significant. 
	From an early age I knew that I would never be able to drive a car for example, so I always looked for things in common with my sighted siblings and friends. Sports was one of these.
True, I could not catch a football or hit a baseball the way others could, but I could learn everything possible about the games that I loved. There was a time when nothing was more important to me than baseball. I studied the game; I knew something about every major league team, something about every player, and everything about the Cincinnati Reds. Those great ball players of the early ’70’s—Johnny Bench, Pete Rose, Joe Morgan, Tony Perez, and many others—were my heroes. Cincinnati Reds broadcasters Marty Brennaman and Joe Nuxall brought the game to life for me as for thousands of others.
With their vivid descriptions of the game and my insatiable desire to learn all I could about the sport, I could hold a conversation about baseball with anyone—my parents, my brothers, or my parents’ friends—it simply didn’t matter.
I knew the game, and I could hold my own with anyone who wanted to talk baseball. I showed no mercy to anyone who challenged the vast superiority of the Big Red Machine to all other teams in the major leagues. No other catcher (living or dead) was in the same category as Johnny Bench.
At the time I was a student at the Ohio State School for the Blind, and although the doctors said I was totally blind, I had some usable vision through most of junior high school. Some of my friends had no vision at all, some just met the legal definition of blindness (20/200), and others were somewhere between the two. We wanted to find a way for all of us to play baseball together. We began by rolling a kick-ball on the ground. That way we did not have to worry about upper and lower strike zones. We stipulated that the ball must be on the ground before reaching the plate. If it went over the plate without being hit, it was a strike. If it did not touch the plate and the batter didn’t swing, it was a ball.
The standard rules of baseball applied—with the exception of having to roll the ball on the ground. Of course, as I have already said, we used a kick-ball rather than a baseball. First base was at the sliding board. Second base was a tree. Third base was a jungle gym. Home plate was a merry-go-round. Of course each of these objects had the appropriate base marker in front of it.
Someone at the base would clap or shout to guide a totally blind base runner. I was not fast, so I would hit the ball as far as I could, then slide headfirst into base because that’s the way Pete Rose often did it. Some plays resulted in physical altercations. I remember talking about our games with my older brother, who was also playing informal games at school. We both expressed frustration at trying to get our teammates to understand that they could not run as fast as they could throw the ball. This is an important concept to understand when trying to put an opponent out. An accurately thrown ball reaches base long before the runner can.
At that time I did not know about the National Federation of the Blind, but it was then that I began to understand part of the NFB philosophy. I knew that, although my sighted brother and I were playing baseball under different conditions and different rules, the fundamentals of the game were the same. We enjoyed and loved the game in much the same way.
At home we used the same system, but the bases were orange cones. These were easy for me to see, and since my father worked construction, they were easy to get. As we got older, almost everyone got tired of this game. Those with enough vision to do so wanted to hit the baseball. The ball had to be in the air: no more rolling it on the ground. I, however, was determined not to be left out. I began pitching. I was taking a chance that the ball would hit me on a line drive, but it was a chance worth taking. I was still in the game.
The game of baseball has changed a great deal in the last thirty years. I don’t enjoy it nearly as much as I once did. My own life is now very different as well. I now have two little boys, who are beginning to learn to play. I can throw the ball so they can work on their fielding skills. I can help teach them the fundamentals and history of the game. I go to practices and to games. I pay attention to the sound as the bat hits the ball, and I listen to the comments of people around me and on the field. When appropriate, I say, “Good hit, son.” And at the end of the day, it never hurts to say, “Hustle a little more.”
Whether we’re talking about the game of baseball or the game of life, blind people can find ways to be successful. A very small percentage of the population earns a living in professional sports. So blind people aren’t at much of a disadvantage with our lack of skills on the ball field.
As a blind person I know that, if I approach life in the same way that I approached baseball as a kid, I can be successful. But the key to success for blind people is good training and opportunity. Although good training can be hard to get, it is available. Equal opportunity is harder to win. More than 70 percent of working-age blind people are unemployed. Commitment to the dream of changing this prospect is one reason why I am a member of the National Federation of the Blind. In this as in many, many other ways we are changing what it means to be blind.