Oh, I get the tears, but one could marvel about his impact on
his caregivers - “He’s the only one in my career that I’ve had of dealing with enucleations (eye removal) – I’ve done an awful lot of them – who has come out in this state of mind and who has some sort of conviction, some sort of purpose,” Myint says. “I admire him for doing that.”`
on other players - That is the toughest guy I’ve ever met," Giants outfielder Alex Dickerson says. “Not just physically but mentally and how brave he is to be doing what he’s doing.”
his own outlook - “Even though I have one less eye, I haven’t seen things this clear my entire life.”
While the challenges are not minimized in the article, but neither are some possibilities…
…He (Dean) no longer needs baseball in an elemental way. This is a test. Of his strength and resolve and willingness to flirt with failure.
Only one man has lost an eye and played in the major leagues: Whammy Douglas, who threw 47 innings for the Pittsburgh Pirates in 1957.
Myint, the eye surgeon, says that the binocular vision two eyes provide matters for up-close depth perception.
But hitters typically decide to swing when the ball is about 45 feet from home plate, where depth-perception issues, Myint says, would not necessarily manifest themselves.
And because, as a baseball player, Robinson’s brain has already exhibited a unique ability to track high-speed movement, the aptitude he had been showing in all these batting-practice sessions, Myint says, could be very real.
Has it been so long since you have seen 5-yr-olds smother ground balls like a soldier protecting his friends from a grenade? Or since you tried your best to hit the bat of your 8-yr-old when you both desperately want him to get a hit? And his joy when his bat finds the ball!
Remember the wonder and joy of this game called baseball.
Could that be the secret of the way Greinke makes us smile and wonder - that he approaches the game (and life) in some childlike ways?
Agree about 5 yr olds, but it works for my son: the parents get involved b/c their children have no clue, so he gets help during the season and finds asst. coaches for future seasons.
It helped some to address the magnet ball effect by having “anchor” parents on the sidelines encouraging their player to wait for the ball to come toward them rather than just following the ball.
Never seen that and I think it’s bullshit. They’re 5-6 year olds (at least that was the grouping at the WestU Y when I was coaching 7-8s). All they want to do is run around and have fun and eat orange slices and drink capri suns.
7-8s were fun to coach, they wanted to learn and I had a great group of parents who stayed out of the way.
My son did two years of Little League and I made it a point to never coach from the stands.
When I umpired Little League in college there were definitely some parents - and coaches - that took things way too seriously. One time a dad followed me to my car to talk about a ball/strike call he thought I’d missed with his kid at the plate.
My son refed Y soccer from the time he was 11 until he was 15. The reason he quit, as the kids got older the parents were jerks. He loved helping the little kids learn the rules and help them understand things. He hated the chirping from the parents. The kids were never the issue. He was calling 7th & 8th grade games as a 9th grader.
However, that experience helped him get his job this summer. He is the head male counselor for the freshman orientation at the university he attends. When they hired him they said, if you can deal with soccer parents, you can probably handle college freshman parents.
My Mac team played a game in a tournament in Killeen against Copperas (sp?) Cove. We won, which apparently their parents thought we had no right to do, They gathered outside our dugout screaming and hollering; the tournament organizers called the police, and the PD officers walked us to our bus.
Mark umpired a few years after HS. He may have some stories too. LL parents who coach from the stands and who yell instructions to their kids are the absolute worst.