I had no idea that Blind Baseball was a thing. But it is, and it is an amazing thing.

Blind Baseball (by awardproductions)

Video via this excellent article:

There are a lot of things I take for granted every day, chief among them that I can see, allowing me to do important things like read Internet memes. But in Italy, there's a baseball league for the blind: 

"Teams are formed of five blind or visually impaired blindfolded players, a sighted player and a sighted defensive assistant. The two sighted members serve as base coaches.

There are fewer innings in a game, and no pitchers or catchers. Instead, a batter throws and hits the ball, a regular-size baseball with five holes and two sleigh bells inside. Fielders must hear where it lands (which must be within the diamond). The sighted players clap paddles at second and third base to orient runners. First base is a beeping mat."

Which is not only amazing in that it allows the vision impaired to play baseball, but it sounds like a hell of a thing to play, too. The league exists primarily due to the contributions of one anonymous female baseball fan, but Matteo Briglia, a vision-impaired software developer, has now come to America in hopes of giving the league wings in the States. Which would be an undoubtedly cool development. 

I just came across this via The Daily What, and it reminded me of this, a story I wrote during a newspaper internship at the Durham Herald-Sun in North Carolina. 

Here's an excerpt. 

Though he couldn't see it, Keith Edgerton was ready for the ball that came whizzing into left field and landed, beeping, a few feet ahead of him. Or at least he thought that was where it landed. He scrambled for a moment, groping in the direction of the muffled beeping until he found it, grabbed it and held it high. 

"Out!" 

The umpire signaled the save, according the rules of Beep Ball, and the Durham Sluggers 

Beep Ball team was one step closer to their 9-0 victory over the Triad team in the first game of the North/South Carolina Beep Ball Tournament at Herndon Park on Friday.

.....

This game of baseball for the blind was created by telephone engineer Charley Fairbanks in 1964 when he put a circuit and a telephone speaker in a softball and other sound units in traffic cone-like bases.