Personal Narrative: Good Eye And Matty Boy

“Good eye, Matt! I would hear from beyond the dugout as I took the first pitch at bat. The pitcher wound-up and threw in the second pitch and I swung. I missed terribly, and my coaches thought so, too. “C’mon Matt, that was practically in the dirt, what are you swinging at?” I thought back to the first pitch and the chants that followed it, “Good eye, Matt” and “Way to watch the ball come in, Matty Boy.” I couldn’t help but think of all the irony surrounding these comments. The fact of the matter was my eyes were far from “good.” Quite honestly, they were terrible. I couldn’t even see the pitch I took. Much like previous at bats, I didn’t swing and would hope for the best, and when I did swing it rarely worked in my favor.

At sixteen months old I was diagnosed with Hyperopia, Refractive Accommodative Esotropia and some loss of binocular vision with poor depth perception. I know that sounds like a mouthful so let me sum it up: I was more or less blind as a bat. This disorder causes both of my eyes to cross in order to focus on objects; I was also born without developing my ability to see up close, also known as farsightedness; therefore I was prescribed bifocals with magnification at sixteen months old. In order to play most …show more content…
Not being able to play baseball was unimaginable. Therefore my parents decided to have sports goggles made for me. These were not your ordinary goggles, these were specially made with magnification to accommodate for the loss of binocular vision. Heading into the fall season that year, I was filled with excitement, thinking these goggles were really going to work. I entered the dugout only to have my entire team laughing at my sports goggles. And to make the situation worse, I struck out three times that game. I felt like I had hit an all-time