Who says just because you’re blind, you can’t play baseball? The Seattle Sluggers, a blind baseball team, faced off against the blindfolded Seattle PD to play their own game of “beep baseball.”
The rules are a little different for beep baseball. The balls are softballs that have been modified to have a speaker and a beeping mechanism in them. The bases, which are lined up 100 feet from the home plate, also admit sound and are soft and shoulder high.
There are six players on each team and everyone on the field, except the spotter, have to be blindfolded. The pitcher pitches to their own batter and then a spotter calls out zone numbers to the outfielders so they know where the ball is.
If the ball is hit, the player runs towards one of the soft bases. If they successfully reach the base before a fielder from the other team reaches the ball, they get a homerun.
Coach Kevin Daniel told KIRO that this benefit game has dual purposes. Daniel said, “It’s a great way for them to reach out to the disabled community and a great way for us to showcase blindness awareness.”
Seattle Slugger Telea Noriega said, “Since I’m blind from birth, I couldn’t play baseball, but I grew up with it … This is a chance for me to really play out a dream that I’ve always had.”