EAST WENATCHEE — Hey, umpire! Are you blind?
That’s one catcall that didn’t come from the crowd Saturday for the Wenatchee Valley’s first “beep baseball” exhibition game between the Wenatchee Blind Bats and the Spokane Lions Pride at Tedford Park.
Umpires at a beep baseball game are among the few people on the field who can actually see. The players are blind. Really!
Saturday’s exhibition was more a tutorial for Wenatchee and a warm show of friendship and support. Spokane coach Troy Leeberg said his team has been playing since 2012.
Wenatchee’s team got together Wednesday. Leeberg and teammates were friendly and helpful, explaining the rules before and during play.
“I got players, but who knows if any of them are going to show up,” the Blind Bats’ manager Rick Barnard said Saturday. Several players who showed for the first practice called in sick for the game.
“Bill, are you going to be a spotter?” he asked his longtime friend Bill Landsborough.
“What’s a spotter?” Landsborough replied.
“We’re scrambling, trying to do the best we can,” Blind Bats’ coach Brad Nelson said. “In the future, when we have an established team, it will be easier. For certain people, this could be a life-changing experience — being part of a team, the camaraderie, for me, that’s powerful.”
Beep baseball is a highly competitive sport that’s been around some 20 years, according to The National Beep Baseball Association website.
The league is 32 teams strong. Its World Series kicked off Sunday with 20 teams participating in round-robin play. One of them is the Seattle South King Sluggers.
But don’t feel bad if you haven’t heard of it. Barnard hadn’t either, and he’s vice president of Wenatchee’s Lilac Services for The Blind office.
The Spokane team contacted him in April through Lilac, because other teams in the state — Seattle, Tacoma and Spokane — want to play tournaments here and asked him to get a team together for Wenatchee.
Barnard turned to his longtime friends for help, including Nelson, who’s coached little league baseball for years. Nelson’s son, Kyle, is assistant coach and Nelson’s wife, Fawna, was a lead recruiter.
“I can be persuasive,” she said.
A huge part of their task was convincing the sponsors they approached that blind beep baseball was an actual sport.
“It’s really hard to go up to a sponsor and tell them I’m putting together a blind baseball team,” Nelson said. “They think, ‘Yeah, right, buddy.’ ”
Player Art Murison of East Wenatchee approached his first turn at bat with skepticism.
“It’s like, I ain’t going to hit this,” he said with a smile. “Instead of seeing, you’re listening for the ball. It gives you insight into what a blind person goes through. And it’s fun!”
Barnard and the Nelsons need more players — sighted or blind — to make it a success. They could also use financial support. They hope to raise funds through team sponsorships and by one day challenging the Valley’s service clubs, cops or firefighters to beep games.
