The first thing I notice is the silence.
All sideline chatter ceases, with the only sound a steady beeping from a ball that is tossed by a pitcher who calls out a couple of words to let the blindfolded batter know it’s almost time to swing.
Then comes the crack of the bat – with the batter exploding out of the box in a full sprint, racing toward a buzzing base 100 feet away.
Except for a “spotter” in the field shouting out the zone where the ball is flying, the silence continues. But the action does not.
As the fielders, also unable to see, launch themselves across the grassy terrain to try to grab the ball, the hitter barrels into the padded base, crashing into it at full speed before tumbling to the ground.
To a first-time spectator, it looks like controlled chaos. But within moments of watching my first Beep Baseball game at Aurora’s Stuart Sports Complex on Wednesday, it became clear this adaptive version of America’s favorite pastime is a remarkable blend of athleticism, trust and communication.
All of which made me quickly understand why the DuPage Sports Commission was eager to partner with the Aurora Area Convention & Visitors Bureau and the city of Aurora to host the 50th National Beep Baseball Association (NBBA) World Series.
This five-day event, which began on Tuesday, has brought more than 500 visually-impaired athletes from across the country to Aurora. The tournament concludes Saturday at 9 a.m. when the top two teams from the 21 squads hailing from coast-to-coast face off to determine the national champion.
Michael Finn, who spent most of his life refusing to let visual impairment keep him on the sidelines, hopes to be on that field Saturday morning.
After losing 85% of his eyesight at age 3 from a doctor’s medication error that “blew out my optic nerve,” the Sacramento, California, massage therapist and fitness trainer, now 57, became a track and field Paralympian. And for the past three decades, he’s one of the country’s most dedicated Beep Baseball players.
His West Coast Dawgs racked up impressive titles before disbanding, so he joined the archrival Blackhawks from Texas – “I’ve become a Southwest frequent flyer” between Sacramento and Austin, he quips – which has nine world titles and had not lost a game in this competition when we met on Wednesday.
But “everybody here has a good story,” says Finn. And there’s plenty of great teams that want to also be in Saturday’s title game: Like the Indy Thunder, which has won six national titles, and the emerging powerhouse Gateway Archers of St. Louis, also undefeated during the early days of the tournament.
The key to this adaptive sport is sound. Players listen for the electronic beep inside the ball to hit and field it, then follow the loud buzz of a foam base as they race 100 feet to reach it – actually, they tackle it – before the defense can record an out.
I’ll admit, if you’ve never seen Beep Baseball, it seems a little strange. For one thing, the pitcher and catcher are on the same team as the batter, and the only bases are along the first and third baselines which, if reached, constitute a run. Also, players wear blindfolds to equalize vision impairments, and because sound is so critical, those watching and participating in the game remain silent or – in my case as I tried to learn the rules – speak only in whispers until a play is completed.
In addition, there are two sighted spotters that shout out the zone in which the ball has been hit. Which means defensive players are also literally throwing their bodies into this game as they try to grab the ball before the runner hits the base.
“You have to have so much trust in the sighted people,” says Glen Capek, who produced the documentary “Beep Baseball: The Unseen Sport,” and grew up around these games because his late father had been an NBBA volunteer in Chicago for four decades.
The game traces its roots to 1964 when engineer Charles Fairbanks modified a softball by inserting an electronic beeping device so blind children could play. Twelve years later advocates from Minnesota, Kansas, Texas and Arizona established the nonprofit National Beep Baseball Association.
Chicago remains the only city to have a team represented at every NBAA World Series, including the current Chicago Comets, which captured the title in 2003.
In the past 50 years, the state has only hosted the tournament two times – in Chicago in 1990 and in Glenview in 2002. But when Igor Bakovic, director of the DuPage Sports Commission, heard about the NBBA at a state sports conference a couple years ago, he knew it was time to bring Beep Baseball back again.
Making it happen, he says, required a partnership between his DuPage group, which could provide a large enough hotel and banquet facility for the 600-plus players, families and volunteers, and Aurora, which was able to provide a sports facility that could accommodate 100 games in a week.
As finalists in the bidding process for this year’s tournament, Bakovic and Brad Banks, sports sales manager for the Aurora Area Convention & Visitors Bureau, attended last year’s NBAA World Series in St. Louis and quickly became fans.
“We were pretty excited when we got it,” Bakovic says of this 50th anniversary event.
While the competition is fierce – there’s plenty of cheering going on when the ball is not in play – “this tournament is also a reunion,” insists Capek, with players, families, volunteers and longtime friends returning each year to celebrate a sport that has been changing lives since it was created.
“The team means a lot to me,” says Blackhawks player Faith Penn, who was born with limited vision because of glaucoma but lost nearly all her remaining eyesight at 21 after a soccer ball struck her eye and detached her retina.
“It gives me the opportunity to travel, meet new people and just feel more free,” she said. “I’ve always loved to run,” so those mad dashes to the bases are her favorite part of the game.
For Darnell Booker, whose “life changed forever” from a BB gun accident at age 15, the sport has become his passion. Now an NBBA Hall of Famer, he began playing in 1985 after graduating from the Indiana School for the Blind and Visually Impaired, and later founded the Indy Thunder, where he played and coached until recently taking on the role of the organization’s vice president and tournament director.
And Booker could not be more proud of how Beep Baseball has grown, with 30 teams in 14 states and international squads in Taiwan, Canada and the Dominican Republic.
Qualifying for World Series play isn’t based on wins or losses but raising the funds to get to the tournament, he tells me, adding that because this sport can be expensive, teams depend on year-round fundraising to attend this event.
That “effort is well worth it,” says Gateway Archers fan Marge Sanders, who points to some of the hundreds of fellow volunteers serving in roles that range from hospitality to field operations, and include those all important spotters and umpires.
“Everyone that comes here is so supportive,” she tells me in a whisper as we watch a game between her beloved St. Louis squad and the New York Bombers.
“The spirit here is incredible.”
dcrosby@tribpub.com
