Eye on The Ball?

As a boy, Ophthalmologist Jose Portal was a star pitcher and a good shortstop too, but, he recalls, "I couldn't hit worth a damn." That is, not until he switched to batting lefthanded. After studying 23 varsity baseball players at the University of Florida campus in Gainesville, Portal thinks he knows why. ; In last week's New England Journal of Medicine, Portal and fellow Researcher Paul Romano reported that it's mostly a matter of eye-hand dominance. The better pitchers -- and poorer hitters -- tend to have a dominant, or favored, eye and hand on the same side. But good hitters have crossed dominance: the preferred eye and hand are on opposite sides. Confusing? Not really. A pitcher needs to be able to sight along the line of a pitch. On the other hand, a lefthanded batter with, say, a batting average of .300 probably has a sharp right eye turned toward the pitcher and a well-tuned left hand to guide his swing. The researchers advise young athletes to take their cue from their dominant eye: "If right-eyed, bat lefthanded, and if left-eyed, bat righthanded." Portal notes, however, that stellar sluggers and pitchers appear to be in a league apart; they don't favor either eye. Says he: "It's as if they have an eye in the center of the brain."