Sports Without Sight: The Amazing World of Beep Baseball
(Beep Baseball Photo by the Louisville Courier-Journal)
Hand-eye coordination. Keep your eye on the ball. Staring down your opponent.
How is it even possible to compete in sports -- any sport -- without your sight?
Acclaimed documentarian Vikram Jayanti ("When We Were Kings," "Game Over: Kasparov and the Machine") is making a splash on the film festival circuit now with "Snowblind," the travails of a blind woman trying to win the grueling Iditarod dogsled race in Alaska.
Even with 20/20 vision, one unlucky turn and you can find yourself neck deep in icy waters. Instant hypothermia.
We've had the opportunity to spend some time with some other remarkable blind athletes. They don't have to worry about drowning, but taking a line drive in the face is a constant danger.
Beep Baseball is a game where players field and hit the ball by hearing sounds, and everyone wears blindfolds to even out the field of varying degrees of vision impairment. No guidedogs allowed.
Check out the action we captured between the Boston Renegades and the Lowell Lightning!
For additional information on the National Beep Baseball Association, check out the Wall Street Journal's coverage of the Beep Ball World Series between California and Taiwan.
(Award Productions HD camera crews regularly capture sports action ranging from Major League Baseball to competitive cheerleading to Paralympic sled hockey. Check out our Sports & Entertainment portfolio here.)