Life’s Curveball: My Journey from Sighted to Blind Baseball Fan

Ball is life. And when I say “ball”, I clearly mean baseball. While I enjoy the occasional basketball game and will watch the NFL when it is in season, baseball has always been it for me.

My earliest sports fandom memories are all baseball related. In fact, even before I could remember, my dad took me to the Astrodome to watch a baseball game. Later, while growing up in central Florida in the 1980s, my only real option for watching baseball regularly was either the Chicago Cubs on WGN or the Atlanta Braves on Turner Broadcasting System (TBS). These stations were on basic cable packages back then, so it allowed me to watch up to about 70 games a season. So, given these two options, I chose the Braves as my team and went all in as they were much closer to megeographically. I just fell in love with the game. I love passion of the players and broadcasters, how the game could humble even the greatest athletes in the world, but also how those same athletes could change everything with one swing of the bat. I could probably write a whole post about all the things I love about baseball but I feel that might be a bit boring for most. Suffice to say, I became a diehard fan pretty quickly. Back to those early years with the Atlanta Braves. I still remember the swagger of Bob Horner and his home run power, the elite all around skills of the two-time MVP Dale Murphy, and of course there was one of my favorite relief pitchers, Steve “Bedrock” Bedrosian. None of these teams in the 1980s was really any good, but that did not matter to me. Because on any given day, just about anything could happen and any team could win. That’s the beauty of baseball.

As I got older, my family moved across the country and while I still follwed the Braves, my new team became the San Diego Padres since we were now living in North San Diego County. Here is where I discovered my all-time favorite player, Tony Gwynn. He is still one of the greatest pure hitters of all time and was quite simply, a magician with a bat in his hand. He was an eight-time batting champion who rarely ever struck out. He also looked like he might be your chubby neighbor, not an elite athlete. This just made me love him even more. But like the Braves, these Padres were rarely any good, except for that one magical season where they made it all the way to the World Series in 1998, and lost. But again, this did not really matter because I just loved the game. I lived close enough that I got to go to a bunch of games at the old Jack Murphy Stadium and take it all in. This team also had amzing broadcasters on both radio and TV, with my favorite being radio man, Jerry Coleman, and his signature “You can hang a star on that one!” after great defensive plays.

At this point in my baseball journey, I’m in my late 20s and move again, this time to Texas. Just like in my previous destinations, I find a new team to fall in love with, the Texas Rangers. I never stopped following the Braves and Padres, but the Rangers have been my main squeeze for more than 25 years now. I have watched and/or listened to about 150 games a year since the early 2000s, and have loved every minute of it. My wife even fell in love for a time with the team, although that might have been largely due to a certain ballplayer named Josh Hamilton and how good he looked in his baseball uniform. While being a fan of the Rangers was often difficult because of how bad some of those teams were. They did make the World Series in both 2010 and 2011, losing both times, which was heartbreaking. But finally, and this is one of my greatest memories, my beloved Rangers finally broke through and won it all in 2023, and I got to see it with my own eyes. I will never forget that feeling and hope every baseball fan gets to feel that, at least once.

In all these years of loving baseball, across multiple states and fandoms, I could always take in the beauty of the game with my vision. And while I occasionally would listen by radio because of where I was at the time, likely in the car, driving somewhere. The TV was always my preferred way of taking it in. Unfortuantely, I can no longer do that. Having lost my vision, I can only hear the games. Thankfully, baseball can really be enjoyed with audio. It is not quite as good as seeing it, but great radio broadcasters still exist and they help bring the game to life, via radio broadcasts. The Rangers have a tremndous duo calling their radio broadcasts in Eric Nadel and Matt Hicks, and I am so very thankful for what they do. I particularly love how they describe each teams uniforms and weather conditions early in the game. They call each pitch and play in more detail than they might on TV, since their job is to help the audio listeners feel like they are there in the stadium.

Do I miss watching the games? Yes, of course I do. But, I have seen thousands of games at this point and have enough memories to go along with the radio broadcast that I can visualize the action in my mind. It is still the game that I love and have loved since I was a kid, listening to Skip Carey call the Braves games.

So, as this new season of my life has begun, it is also my first season of being a baseball fan without sight as well. I feel blessed that at least in this one thing, that I can still experience the splendor of this most beautiful game. Will it be the same as if I was watching it? No. But that’s okay. Because baseball is such a good metaphor for life, especially a blind life. It can be humbling, uplifting, mundane, and dramatic and just about everything in between. I just need to keep getting back in the batter’s box and get ready for that next curveball.

Now, I just need to go get a hot dog and some popcorn and get ready for Rangers versus the Chicago Cubs tonight. That reminds me, I actually have been to a game at Wrigley Field in Chicago before…

Maybe we should save that story for another time.