Contact lenses

[bpj]

As a former contact wearer and having had lasik surgery, how in the world are professional sports teams letting their players play with subpar vision?

JP Crawford talked about his contacts on one of the pregame segments..

Contact lenses are a pain in the ass, especially in a 162 game season. How many other players havent had their eyes fixed when needed?

Lasik is like having a cavity filled at this point, they need to make sure their players can see.

[Millikin]

I had Lasik about 2 years ago and I wish I had done it sooner. Contacts are a gigantic pain in the ass and eventually screw up your eyes. Glasses are even worse, especially if you have a bit of OCD. Every time there was a tiny smudge or raindrop, I'd have to stop and clean them, else go insane.

That said, I think a lot of people are just afraid of Lasik, plus there are some that just can't have it done for a variety of reasons.

I bet baseball players/agents are afraid of a botched procedure leaving them blind and DFA'd.

[Donn Beach]

ballplayers are very aware of their eyesight and ways to improve it, its on the cutting edge of sports medicine these days, they are not being allowed to play with subpar vision. We are not talking 20/20 vision, that isn't good enough to play baseball. Its about correcting above that, its really about performance enhancement.

Most eye charts go to only 20-15 and stop there. The average
major-league baseball player, in the experience of Red Sox
ophthalmology consultant Daniel Laby, has vision that measures
around 20-12 or has been corrected to 20-12.

The limit of human vision is around 20-8 - meaning a person can
see from 20 feet what the average person can see from 8. Laby has
never seen anyone in his Massachusetts practice at 20-8, but he
sees a few baseball players in spring training who measure at
20-8.

“If you come in and you’re 20-20 and you’re playing major-league
baseball, we’re not going to leave you there because that’s not
going to be good enough,” said Laby, who has worked with the Red
Sox since 2003 and has started work with the Chicago Cubs this
spring. “I’m going to get you to more of the normal vision.”

https://www.providencejournal.com/artic ... /303169996


and Lasik isn't necessarily seen as the solution

What Laby has found is that there generally is a minimum vision threshold for baseball.

“If you’re 20-15 or better, I think you have the resolution ability to detect the spin and get that piece of the puzzle into account,” Laby said.

The issue with LASIK, therefore, is that the procedure typically results in vision that’s at least 20-20, but that’s not good enough for hitting major league pitching. The proportion who ultimately have 20-15 vision is not high. Furthermore, LASIK can sometimes result in side effects like dry eye and glare problems. Driving the point home further: Laby studied the on-field results of players who had the operation and found not statistically significant difference between their performance before and after the surgery.

“The bottom line is that we tell all players we take care of to do LASIK the day after they retire,” Laby said. “In other words, it is not what they should do during their careers.”

https://www.sporttechie.com/dr-daniel-l ... -training/

[Sibelius Hindemith]

Well there you go. Thread over.