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Damien Gonzalez has grown up watching Yankees baseball, usually on a phone held inches from his nose. More often, he listens to the broadcasts.
Gonzalez, who turns 15 in June, was born with congenital glaucoma and is legally blind. As he kept warm in the family’s SUV before an early season practice in Newark, the teen from Emerson considered a question about how he was able to play the game he loves.
“What does your world look like?” he replied defiantly, before explaining his view of the field is “a little blurry,” with objects closer to him appearing more clear.
Damien didn’t consider his low vision when he asked to try tee ball at age 6. His anxious parents, Nestor and Alice Gonzalez, got him into Emerson’s youth softball program instead.
“It was a little awkward,” Nestor Gonzalez recalled. “Some of the parents made comments. Even some of the umpires said, ‘This is a girls’ league. You know that, right?'”
Seeking a safe, more welcoming option, Nestor Gonzalez found the New Jersey Titans beep baseball team, which plays a modified version of the national pastime designed for the blind and visually impaired.
The Titans are one of the original teams in the National Beep Baseball Association, which fields 30 squads around the world and will host its World Series this summer in Norman, Oklahoma. The Titans are a decade-old spinoff of the New Jersey Lightning, with whom they now share the Garden State.
Damien and Nestor Gonzalez have been part of the Titans program for six years, with Nestor now serving as head coach and president.
“I used to be the crutch for his disability. Now I try to be the springboard for him,” Nestor Gonzalez said. Damien also wrestles, skis and rides a bike, and is going to aviation camp this summer.
“Don’t let the vision thing hold you up,” his father tells him.
Beep baseball: the rules
Beep baseball is similar to what Major Leaguers play, with a few significant differences.
Teams are comprised of at least six visually impaired players, all of whom wear blindfolds while batting or fielding, as well as sighted pitchers and catchers. Spotters in the outfield help direct defensive players toward a batted ball.
The game uses a modified softball which weighs about a pound and beeps like an alarm clock.
At the practice in March, Nestor Gonzalez stood on a field in Newark’s Weequahic Park as his son waited at the plate, clad in white pants with navy pinstripes like the Bronx Bombers.
“Ready,” the father shouted, alerting the Titans that he was about to throw the ball. “Pitch,” he yelled, as he released the beeping white sphere toward Damien.
Damien swung and connected. His teammates, all older and from across New Jersey, dove and scrambled after the ball using their ears for guidance.
In beep baseball, first and third base are 4-foot tall padded cylinders with speakers. They’re placed 100 feet down each baseline and 10 feet outside the foul lines to prevent runners and fielders from colliding. When the ball is hit, a base is activated and emits a loud buzz, similar to the whine between frequencies on the radio dial.
The batters, who use the same equipment as traditional baseball players, must get to the base before the ball is fielded. If they’re safe, a run scores.
A hit ball must travel a minimum of 40 feet. If it goes farther than 170 feet on the fly, it’s a homer – worth two runs, as long as the batter reaches the buzzing base within 30 seconds.
For the legally blind, a league of their own
Nestor Gonzalez said Damien didn’t score a run in his first two years playing. Samantha Mischler, a 29-year-old from Monroe, still hasn’t scored after eight seasons with the Titans. But, Gonzalez added, “She’s worked so hard on her swing and hitting the ball as hard as she can. This is going to be her year.”
Mischler has trouble seeing details or objects that are far away, but her low vision can’t be corrected due to nystagmus, which causes her eyes to move uncontrollably. She ran cross country and middle distances at Monroe High School with a guide. She loved the 400 meters and the mile, she said, but “hated the 800, because how do you pace that?”
She first saw a beep baseball demonstration at Camp Marcella, a Rockaway Township sleepaway camp for the blind, when she was 10 years old. But it took more than a decade for her to connect with the Titans.
“To find out there are sports teams for people with low vision just blew my mind,” said Mischler, a classroom aide in a Sayreville preschool. “I’m the only female player, but I don’t think of it that way. I am a teammate. I’ve been cleated and didn’t even flinch. I’ve had beep baseballs hit me on the top of my head: ‘Oh, ow, all right then, keep on playing.’ I firmly believe your individual identity is important, but you’re a team. You’re all one.”
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Family on the field
That camaraderie is what got Alfonso Harrell hooked on the Titans.
One of six siblings, three of whom were born legally blind, Harrell was hesitant to share his condition with people or to ask for help. The 29-year-old said he switched from special-education classes at a Newark public school to a school for the blind, and back again after telling his mom, “I’m not learning nothing here. I don’t want to do this.”
Harrell said he got an aide to take notes, and was on his way through mainstreamed classes instead of the “small box” of the specialized school.
After graduating from high school, he went to the Joseph Kohn Training Center in New Brunswick to become more independent. That’s where he was introduced to goalball – another sport for the visually impaired – and then beep baseball. Harrell is the first in his family to graduate from college, earning first his associate’s degree at Bergen County Community College and then a bachelor’s in business management from Kean University.
Harrell, Lamont Bordley from Hamilton and Newark resident Marvin Morgan are among the original Titans from the 2013-14 season. The team later brought in Mischler, Damien Gonzalez, Zak Turner of Hillsdale, and even teammates from Long Island, Philadelphia, North Carolina and Iowa who drive or fly in when they can.
On Saturday, the Titans will play the Long Island Bombers on the North Meadow baseball fields in New York City’s Central Park.
Future Titans games are scheduled for July 1 in Philadelphia and July 14 in Boston. The National Beep Baseball Association World Series will be held July 30 to August 5 in Oklahoma. The Titans finished fifth in 2019 and 2021.
Damien Gonzalez has been the youngest player, and the only one under 15, at all five World Series he’s attended.
“Being around other blind people helped me so much as far as being comfortable with being blind myself,” said Harrell, a father of two young daughters who works as a recruiter for Bestwork Industries for the Blind in Cherry Hill.
“These kids growing up now are probably the only blind person [they know] in their town,” he said. “Maybe someone will see the sport and know someone who is visually impaired or blind, and can point them in the right direction. Even if they don’t play the sport, being around someone else like yourself is important. It all matters.”
Jane Havsy is a storyteller for the Daily Record and DailyRecord.com, part of the USA TODAY Network. For full access to live scores, breaking news and analysis, subscribe today.
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Email: JHavsy@gannett.com
Twitter: @dailyrecordspts
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