by Baseball Softball UK, www.baseballsoftballuk.com
On Sunday 29 September, Farnham Park played host to the first Beep Baseball (blind baseball) taster event in the UK. Participants with visual impairments ranging from sighted to partially sighted to fully blind attended from as far and wide as Oxfordshire, Norfolk, Berkshire and Buckinghamshire.
How it works
Beep BallBeep Baseball (also known as Beep Ball) is played on a grass field with six fielders. The only other players on the field are the pitcher, catcher and spotters, plus the batter from the other team.
Fielders and batter are blindfolded, while the catcher, pitcher, and spotters do not wear blindfolds and are usually sighted. The bases are coloured blue and are nearly five feet tall, with a foamy interior and built-in electronics that cause them to buzz or beep continuously after a switch is turned on. Likewise, electronics inside the ball produce a beeping noise.
The bases are placed 100 feet from home plate and are in equivalent positions to the bases in regular baseball.
History
The sport is now well-established and popular in the United States, and there is a National Beep Baseball Association (NBBA), formed in 1976, that exists to support visually-impaired adults to play baseball. Each year the NBBA coordinates local, state, and regional tournaments, among them the Indy Invitational in Indianapolis, Indiana, and the Bolingbrook Beep Ball Bash outside Chicago.
The sport also has a strong following in France, Italy and Germany.
Read more about BaseballSoftballUK’s Beep Baseball project on their website