John M. Cropper

Before Josh Mann even heard the beep of the ball hurling toward him, he shifted his weight in anticipation and swung his bat: strike one.”Too early that time,” said pitcher Dan Kelley, instructing Mann where to swing.

Kelley threw the ball again and this time Mann, a junior in exercise science, connected.

What would seem like a normal game of softball was made unusual by one small stipulation: Mann, like most of his teammates, is blind.

The Office for Disability Services at OSU organized and hosted the game of Beep Baseball, which uses a modified softball that beeps when activated, on the South Oval Thursday.

Chris Keck, a counselor with ODS, helped organize the event. The game was the first activity scheduled for his new organization, Sports Finding Unified Sports in OSU’s Networks, which he is an advisor, Keck said.”[F.U.S.I.O.N.] was designed as an organization for people with or without disabilities to find different athletic opportunities on campus,” he said.

The game drew students and volunteers, both sighted and blind, to the South Oval for two hours. The time was divided equally into instruction and game play, though the largest part of the two hours was spent coaching the batters how to swing.

Freshmen Joe Stephens and Ryan Brown, both engineering majors from Hilliard, stopped on their way back from class to try their luck. Both donned blindfolds, and both struck out.

“I knew it was going to be hard,” Stephens said. “After all, I don’t have a lot of experience being blind.”

Nine pitches later, Stephens made contact and ran cautiously to the bases – two 4-foot-tall padded cylinders that emit the same beeping sound as the ball.

“I’ve never played anything like this,” said Mann, who suffers from a rare eye disease called Retinitis Pigmentosa – a genetic condition that causes the deterioration of the retina. He has been legally blind since 2002, though he was born with the condition.

Mann said ODS has been “very helpful” in offering assistance with his disability. The office provides lab assistants, note takers and textbooks in PDF so he can read his homework on his computer in large font, he said.

In addition to ODS and Sports F.U.S.I.O.N., players from the Columbus Vipers, Columbus’ professional Beep Baseball team, were on hand to teach the rules of the game. Players Stephen Plouck and Dan Kelley, who are blind and sighted, respectively, offered tips on how to hit without sight.

“You can’t listen for the beeping,” Kelley said. “It’s all about timing. When I say ‘Pitch,’ you start your swing.”

Plouck and Kelley have played with the Vipers since 1993, when the team was founded and added to the relatively new National Beep Baseball Association. The league currently has 18 registered teams, including those from Long Island, Kansas, Taiwan and Boston.

For more information on Sports F.U.S.I.O.N.’s activities, visit ODS on the Web at ods.osu.edu.