20/20 vision? You might just be batting average

MIAMI — Pete Rose found baseball, at its essence, to be a simple game.

"See the ball," he said. "Hit the ball."

And nobody did that more often than Rose, the sports' all-time hits leader.

But what if you can't see the ball? That happened to Baltimore Orioles outfielder Jay Gibbons.

"My vision just went on me all of a sudden," he said. "I was screwed."

Same thing with Oakland's Dan Johnson, who accidentally sprayed sunscreen into his right eye last spring and wound up with double vision.

"I used to hit breaking balls -- [until] I couldn't see them," recalled Johnson, whose batting average plummeted more than 40 points. He didn't even try to hit curveball pitches, he said. "I would just take them, because I would lose them."

Johnson did eye exercises during the off-season for up to six hours a day. The improvement showed in spring training, where he hit .294 with 10 walks before he ended up on the disabled list because of a hip injury.

The episodes proved to be eye-openers for both players who had always taken near-perfect eyesight for granted. Now, they're among a growing number of professional athletes focusing on new and improved technologies to recover lost vision skills.

Not all the attention is coming from players with damaged or diminished eyesight. Even players with normal vision are turning to everything from laser surgery and tinted contact lenses to eye-strengthening exercises and high-priced "ocular" machines in search of a competitive edge.

"There's so much technology with eyes now," said Angels hitting coach Mickey Hatcher. "Players know that, hey, it's worth spending the money."

Or getting the team to spend the money, which is what Carlos Beltran did when he signed with the New York Mets before the 2005 season. Included in his $119-million contract was a clause that required the Mets to purchase an $85,000 "enhanced ocular device."

The device is a high-speed pitching machine that fires specially marked tennis balls at speeds up to 155 mph. Players try to read the markings as the ball flies by, an exercise intended to improve both focus and concentration. The Kansas City Royals, Seattle Mariners, Chicago Cubs, Cleveland Indians and the Olympic champion U.S. women's softball team have experimented with the ocular machine.