Do professional baseball players have better than average vision?
The answer appears to be “yes”, professional baseball players do have much better than average visual acuity A long running study (The Visual Function of Professional Baseball Players Laby DM, Rosenbaum AL, et al: AM J OPHTHALMOL 1996; 122 (October): 476-485) studied the vision of 387 major and minor league players from the Los Angeles Dodgers baseball organization between 1992 to 1995. Visual acuity, contrast sensitivity, and depth perception (as distance) were tested. 77% of eyes were found to see 20/15 or better, with 1.7% being 20/9.2. Normal vision is 20/20. A person with vision of 20/9 is able to see at 20 feet what a person with normal vision would have to come up to 9 feet to see. This is close to the theoretical limit of human vision. Depth perception and contrast sensitivity were also found to be significantly better than the general population. Whether this superior vision translates to better performance on the field has yet to be determined.
