Beeping ball helps blind play baseball

Blind competitors play hard in annual beep baseball tournament

DURHAM -- When Glenn Permar of the Durham Sluggers came up to bat, the opposing Raleigh Rockets razzed their former teammate. "Let's get the old man out," one shouted.

Despite the friendly taunts, Permar, 55, a player-coach and prolific hitter, drove a fat pitch into shallow left field. Two fielders scrambled toward the ball, but Permar slid head first into a base 90 feet away and scored a run. His teammates on the Durham bench exploded in celebration and chanting.

"What do Sluggers do?" one player shouted. "SCORE!" the rest answered. "What do we want?" "MORE!"

It looked like a typical hotly contested summer softball tournament. But Permar and most of the athletes taking their cuts and playing the field in this tournament are blind -- though that wasn't obvious at first, from watching their athletic play.

The Sluggers and the Raleigh Rockets are rivals in the North Carolina-South Carolina beepball league.

Beepball, or beep baseball, is an adaptation of softball for visually impaired people that emphasizes keen hearing and hand-ear coordination. The softball sounds a shrill beep to help fielders track it down.

The Carolinas beepball league held its annual tournament with five teams at Herndon Park in Durham on Friday and Saturday. About 70 players participated, but by the end, it came down to Raleigh and Durham, the two-time defending champions.

"I've always been a competitive person in sports," said Permar of Durham, who has an inherited eye disease that caused him to lose his vision by age 30.

"Beep baseball is a pretty competitive game. You get that feeling of real competition when you are out there. Sometimes it gets pretty intense."

The players' impairment doesn't stop them from hitting a softball or blazing down the base paths at the same speed as a sighted runner or knowing when to slide before reaching the base.

"It amazes other people what blind people can do," said John Ingram, 41, a player for the Rockets. "Lots of people think because we're blind, we can't do anything. We can do anything. You don't just have to sit around."

Just as keen eyesight is important in baseball, acute hearing is critical in beepball. At one point, the noise of a plane flying overhead briefly halted Saturday's tournament.

The hitters try to swing at a consistent height and time their swings to when the pitcher tells them he is releasing the pitch.

Because players have different levels of visual impairment, they wear blindfolds when hitting and fielding.

Seven outfielders patrol pie-shaped zones of the outfield. When a batter puts the ball in play, a sighted person in the field announces which zone the ball is headed toward. Often the players have already heard it and have started moving in that direction.

"The greatest challenge is a defensive play," said Tommy Simmons, 59, a Rockets player who runs a cafeteria in a Raleigh state office building. "It's you going against the ball. The ball sounds different depending on where you are playing."

The Durham Sluggers won three straight games Saturday, including the final, 6-5 over Raleigh, to take their third-straight tournament championship.

Earl Whitaker of Denton, a retired police officer and chief umpire, said he had been involved with beepball about 20 years.

"It gives me a different appreciation for what someone can do with a handicap, how they can overcome it," Whitaker said. "We have played ballplayers who are professional, and they don't stand a chance."

One tradition that beepball shares with baseball is fans heckling the umpires.

Whitaker said, "It makes you feel funny when a fellow behind you shouts, 'Umpire, I'm blind, but I can see better than you can.' "