On Tuesday, Oct. 28, the Shepherd University baseball team took part in “Beep Baseball”.
“Beep Baseball was created as a form of physical therapy for the visually impaired,” said Haley Greene, a senior communications major who helped run the event for her senior capstone, “and it helps to strengthen other senses.”
At the event, everyone was introduced to Teagan Russ, the girl who inspired the event. Teagan was born legally blind. She is not completely blind, but she will never be able to do things such as driving. However, she is very active.
Her parents have always pushed her to do different activities, such as hiking and horseback riding. Her father, Glenn Russ, said “we have always pushed her to do things. We don’t want to tell her ‘you can’t do that’”.
In Beep Baseball, everyone is blindfolded. The ball is about double the size of a normal baseball and it makes a loud beeping noise so that players can hear it. That is how they either hit it or field it. The ball is placed on a tee and the batter will be lined up before swinging. Once the batter makes contact, they will try to get on base. Each base had a person on them blowing a whistle, making the batter rely on their hearing to get to the base. For the fielders, they will try to find the beeping ball. If they grab it and yell, “I got it!” before the batter reaches the base, the batter is out. If the batter reaches the base before that, they get a point.
For the baseball team, it was the Blue team versus the Gold team. Throughout the night, there were plenty of moments that made the players and the audience laugh. Every time a player hit the tee and not the ball, the players would yell “foul ball!”, as well as plenty of moment where the fielders struggled to find the ball. There were many occasions where five fielders would pile on top of each other trying to find it.
In the end, the Gold Team recorded nine points while the blue team had four. After that, members of the audience got a chance to chance to play.
“It was a good experience,” said Michael Carpenter, a member of the Shepherd baseball team, “I hope to do it again.” He also said he learned how important hearing is.
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