What separates the best athletes in the world from those of us who watch them on TV? Is 
it the determination and effort of countless hour perfecting their craft? Is it a natural disposition to anything athletic or an unbelievable amount of luck? It’s got to be some combination of the above but also, as Sports Illustrated highlighted in this weeks edition, eyesight may have something to do with it. Hand eye coordination is central to any athletic activity and it follows that eyesight is vital. Are athletes eyes actually better, or is that just the layman’s excuse for athletic failure?
In 1992 – 1995, a group of ophthalmologists (eye researchers) tested many players in the Dodgers organization. They test they used initially gauged vision only up to 20-15. Which, though better than average does a poor job of quantifying exactly how superior a given eyesight sees. Of those first players tested, some 81% maxed out the test. The next year, the ophthalmologists were armed with a test capable of determining eyesight down to the theoretical maximum of eyesight (20-8). The 1993 results found that the average eyesight was about 20-13 with about 2% better than 20-9, approaching the theoretical perfection.
Dr. Daniel Laby, the researcher in charge of the Dodgers tests, said in reference to the players scoring better than 20-9, “I can pretty comfortably say that in 20 years of caring for people’s eyes, I’ve never seen someone outside of pro athletics achieve that.”
It’s pretty obvious that the pro baseball players fair better than the average human. Another result from this study is that big leaguers fared better than minor leaguers. No mention was made of how All-Stars or veterans scored on the tests which kind of makes me sad because I would have liked to see that data.
Other studies have been done on the intervals with which batters see as the pitch travels. I 
could not find a link to this but the basic idea is that our eyes do not see as a steady stream of information but rather still images that our brain combines to a stream of vision. The average human moves their eyes about three times every second even if you are trying to focus on a single thing. The thought, and research backs it up, is that the top baseball players eyes capture more of these still images, allowing them to see the ball better as it travels to the plate in 400 milliseconds.
All of this makes me think of the difficulties that guys like Brian McCann and Jay Gibbons have had with their eyes (both have spent time on the DL in recovering from eye problems). And Infielder Chris Brown in 1992, who missed a game because he “slept on his eye funny.” Other eye issues have occurred because of hit by pitches and freak accidents but, it cannot be stressed enough how important eyes are to the success of a baseball player.
I know there are many other studies out there that perhaps our readers could share but, I’ll leave you with my favorite baseball quote:
“Baseball is 90 percent mental; the other half is physical.” -Yogi Berra
-Sean Morash
