Baseball and Vision Series: Fielding

When discussing visual skills and baseball, most conversations focus (pun intended) on batting, which indeed is one of the most visually demanding tasks in professional sports.   Pitching also requires good visual skills, but fielding is also overlooked in discussions around vision and baseball performance.

Let’s break fielding down into 3 groups;  Infielding, Outfielding and Catcher Fielding, as these three different groups use different visual skills in many situations.  We will discuss infielding and outfielding in this post and save catching for a later time.

Infielders handle line drives, grounders, base-stealers and the occasional infield fly.

Line Drives:  The major league average velocity of a ball-off-the-bat is 104 mph.  With a projectile heading at your body at that speed, visual tracking, reaction time, acuity and depth perception play an important role in one’s ability to get a glove on it.  Visual tracking starts the second the ball leaves the bat.  The image of the trajectory of the ball as it leaves the bat is projected on the retina (the back of the infielders eye) is used by the brain to calculate (a) the approximate speed the ball is approaching and (b) the x, y, z coordinates that the ball is most likely to cross from the fielders “ready position”.  This enables the fielder to adjust position slightly and estimate what direction he might have to lunge to get to the ball; either forwards, backwards, up, down, right, left,  or a combination of these movements that might also happen directly in front of his body.

Visual cues are used to gauge reaction time in order to align glove with ball and capture the ball by closing the glove in a timely manner.

Visual acuity (clarity) is important, as blur causes the image of the ball that falls on the players retina to appear larger than it actually is, and this can throw off the other visual cues used to trap the ball in the glove.

In order to catch any ball, Depth perception needs to be intact for the brain to make the calculations with data provided by other visual cues accurately.  Depth perception happens when the eyes are able to fuse the image from each eye in the brain, and the eyes also use what are called “depth cues” to judge depth as well.  If a player doesn’t have good depth perception, he may rely on depth cues to judge the ball, however he will never be able to field the ball as well as a player who has good depth perception.  Depth cues include perspective, shading, occlusion, haze, and relative motion.  If depth cues are eliminated, all the depth perception in the world won’t help someone field a ball – for instance, it might be impossible to judge a line drive if it is foggy out, or if the color of the ball didn’t provide good image contrast against the background the fielder had to discern the ball from, such as the crowd or the grass.

Infielders also need to be able to use these cues to trap grounders; reaction time is key to catching

Infielders also rely heavily on peripheral vision and reaction time as they are responsible for keeping base runners from stealing.

Outfielders usually are responsible for handling fly balls, and as such are required to have excellent depth perception and be able to interpret depth cues. They also must have good tracking skills, but they have longer to assess the trajectory of the ball and get their body in the correct position to catch the ball.

Peripheral vision comes into play when two fielders are chasing after the same ball – they must be aware of each others position to avoid colliding both in the interest of saving a base or a run and in the interest of saving themselves from the trauma.  Baseball players are taught to yell “mine” or “I got it” so they don’t have to count on their peripheral vision to avoid these collisions.

Tracking becomes more important for fielders when they attempt to save a ball from becoming a home run – they use their peripheral vision to estimate their distance from the wall, they use tracking to estimate when and where to launch themselves and how to position their glove to increase their odds of catching the ball, and, of course, timing to make the catch (or miss it for that matter!)

Courtesy of the Doctors at Shady Grove Eye and Vision Care; Optometrists, Ophthalmologists and Opticians working together to help you see better.  Serving the Rockville, Potomac and Gaithersburg Maryland suburbs of Washington, DC for over 40 years. For more information visit youreyesite.com or call (301) 670-1212

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Baseball and Vision: What it Takes to Hit a Baseball

So you want to hit better?  Pete Rose was once asked how he hit so well. His answer: “See the ball, hit the ball”.

Obviously, vision plays a crucial role in ones ability to hit, but what role it plays is not so obvious.  Seeing an object clearly, and viewing an object traveling near 100 mph  and being able to guess it’s position in a millisecond are two different things and involve very different skills.  When viewing a baseball that is static, let’s say, sitting on a table top, the only “skill” needed to see it is visual acuity, or the ability of the eyes optics to focus the image properly.  For viewing an object in motion, clarity is important as well, but tracking the object of regard is important, as is the brains ability to accurately process the tracking information.

For viewing and connecting a bat in motion with ball in motion (1) the image of the object of regard (the ball) has to fall clearly on the back of the eye (2) the eye needs to successfully track the image  (3) the brain uses the tracking information to project the future position in space (over the plate) that the ball is likely to end up (4)  hand-eye motor coordination needs to time and place the swing of the bat to coincide with the tracking system projection of where the ball is headed (5) estimates need to be made of where the plate is in relationship to the pitch using peripheral vision cues (6) speed is estimated by the rate at which the image of the ball is transmitted across the retina and (7) depth perception information is used to adjust each of these calculations.   Looking at things from this perspective, the act of hitting a ball, even a 40 mph pitch seems visually statistically impossible, yet Major League batters connect with the ball  often more than 2.5 times out of 10 on pitches exceeding 80 mph all the time!

The visual skills that are used to be a better hitter can be enhanced.  The first step is to have a comprehensive eye exam including a binocular vision evaluation to make sure you have basic eye functions that will enable you to successfully track a ball.  Next, as with any exercise, you can hone your visual skills through repetitive actions – get to the batting cages.  The next step would be to find a developmental and/or sports vision specialist, usually an optometrist, who can engage you in certain visual tasks that train the visual abilities described in the previous paragraph.  Many professional baseball players are involved in visual training programs. More information on hitting a baseball is available in my other post on hitting  http://wp.me/pxAmm-hk

Courtesy of Dr. Alan Glazier of Shady Grove Eye and Vision Care; Optometrists, Ophthalmologists and Opticians working together to help you see better.  Serving the Rockville, Potomac and Gaithersburg Maryland suburbs of Washington, DC for over 40 years.  Connect with us on Facebook (see below), visit our virtual practice at youreyesite.com or call (301) 670-1212 for more information.  Connect with us on twitter @eyeinfo

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