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| Thyroid Cancer Survivor Reggie Deal is Blind |
From
his seat in an upper-reserved section of Rangers Ballpark on Sunday night,
Reggie Deal couldn't see the ballgame the Rangers and Rays were playing. But he could hear it, he could smell it, he
could sense it. For Deal, baseball provides a pull that goes beyond the
boundaries of the blindness he's been inflicted with virtually all of his 39
years. Baseball is his passion, if not his outright obsession.
"There
are a lot of things you're able to experience," he said, "when your faculties
take over and supplement what's not there." Simply being there -- in the stands,
with the game playing out in front of him, his fellow fans beside him and the
sounds of the sport surrounding him -- is an experience that means a lot to
Deal.And that's why Sunday was the start of something special.
In the span of 30 days, Deal is
going to visit each of the Major Leagues' 30 ballparks. He'll traverse the
country, mostly on his own, via bus and plane, taxi and train, all with an end
goal of fulfilling a lifelong dream while simultaneously showing others his is
a life without all the perceived limits.
Crazy? Sure, it's a little crazy.
But having survived a
thyroid-cancer scare a few years back, having married a woman who's a big
believer in scratching items off life's "bucket list" and having
spent weeks poring over team schedules and laboring over the logistics, Deal,
an Afton, Wyo., resident, realized this little dream of his was just crazy
enough to come true.
"I want people to have a
different visual of what blindness entails," he said. "People get
caught up in the negative, but there are ways to work around it."
Deal has had to work around it
essentially from the beginning. He was born prematurely in 1973, and doctors
told his parents his odds of survival were one in four. He was placed in an
incubator that helped his lung tissues develop and heal, but the environment was
90 percent pure oxygen, or roughly 4 1/2 times the typical atmospheric setting.
The prolonged exposure caused Reggie's retinas to hemorrhage and detach from
his eyes, permanently blinding him.
"They're much more watchful
for signs of issues now than they were back then," Deal said. "While
it's still a threat for kids born that early, it's something they can mitigate
now, more than 35-40 years ago."
He's never felt cheated, never
felt wronged. His blindness is all that he's known, and it certainly didn't stop
him from earning his bachelor's degree in journalism at Texas A&M or his
master's in education counseling from Texas State University-San Marcos. Yet it wasn't until the cancer
diagnosis four years ago when Deal truly gained perspective on life's fickle and
fleeting nature. And that only further fueled his desire to do the 30-in-30
tour.
"I had planned to meet a
friend in California, and we were going to go to a Padres game and then an
Angels game," he said. "But I had to cancel that at the last minute
because I had not been feeling well. Only a couple weeks after that, the
doctors noticed I had an enlargement on the thyroid. They said, 'This has got
to come out.'"
The cancer diagnosis came in late
June of 2008, and the surgery was performed on July 14. One week post-op, Deal
met with his doctor and was given a green light to start traveling again. He
went straight from the doctor's office to the airport, hopped on a flight to
Philadelphia and took a train to New York to see consecutive games at Yankee Stadium
and Shea Stadium.
Yep, it's an obsession, all
right.
"With everything that went
on that summer, baseball was the one distraction that I had," he says.
"It kept me halfway sane." And so when Deal, now
cancer-free, met his wife, Lorna, through an online dating service in 2010, she
quickly caught on that baseball is part of the package. "He picks up on so many
aspects of the game," she said. "He can explain to you everything
that's happening, and he just has an intense passion."
The passion to experience every
park became a little more realistic when Deal left his job in student affairs
at a Texas community college to move to Wyoming to be with Lorna, a teacher.
He'll be looking for a new job in the fall, but in the meantime, he's taking
full advantage of the time off. And when he inherited some money after his
father passed away last year, he had funding to apply to the trip.
So Reggie plotted his Major
League map as soon as the 2012 schedules came out. His travels will involve
some tight turnarounds, late nights and early flights. And though he'll be
meeting up with several friends along the way, he'll largely be flying solo.
"It makes me a little bit
nervous," said Heather Compton, a friend of Reggie's who accompanied him
to the Rangers game, "because it's so easy for somebody to take advantage
of him. But he's pretty aware. He's learned how to handle himself, and he's one
of those people that it only takes a few minutes to become friends with him.
You can be perfect strangers one minute and friends the next."
Deal plans to make many new
friends on this trip. At each game, he'll have the local radio broadcast
playing in one ear -- loud enough to follow the action but quiet enough to
interact with those around him. He'll be recapping his
experiences on his MLBlog and
on his Facebook
page, and he'll also be wearing a wristband and shirt promoting ThyCa
(the Thyroid Cancer Survivors' Association) -- a cause that's obviously grown
near and dear to his heart.
Why would a blind man go to such
great lengths to experience and document something he'll never see? Easy. Because he can, and because he wants you to
know he can. "People ask me, 'How can you enjoy the game without seeing
it?'" he said. "I say, 'You don't realize how much of the game you
can pick up on until you close your eyes.'"
Article by Anthony
Castrovince is a reporter for MLB.com. Read his columns and
his blog, CastroTurf,
and follow him on Twitter at @Castrovince.
This story was not subject to the approval of Major League Baseball or its
clubs.
WHEre IS REGGIE? 30 PARKS, 30 DAYS
A blind fan's journey through the Major Leagues| Date/Stadium |
|---|
| April 29: Rangers Ballpark, Arlington |
| April 30: Minute Maid Park, Houston |
| May 1: Turner Field, Atlanta |
| May 2: Busch Stadium, St. Louis |
| May 3: Kauffman Stadium, Kansas City |
| May 4: Tropicana Field, St. Petersburg |
| May 5: Citi Field, New York |
| May 6: Nationals Park, Washington, D.C. |
| May 7: Oriole Park, Baltimore |
| May 8: Citizens Bank Park, Philadelphia |
| May 9: Yankee Stadium, New York |
| May 10: Fenway Park, Boston |
| May 11: Target Field, Minneapolis |
| May 12: Chase Field, Phoenix |
| May 13: The Coliseum, Oakland |
| May 14: AT&T Park, San Francisco |
| May 15: Dodger Stadium, Los Angeles |
| May 16: Petco Park, San Diego |
| May 17: Angel Stadium, Anaheim |
| May 18: Rogers Centre, Toronto |
| May 19: Comerica Park, Detroit |
| May 20: Coors Field, Denver |
| May 21: Safeco Field, Seattle |
| May 22: Miller Park, Milwaukee |
| May 23: Progressive Field, Cleveland |
| May 24: Great American Ball Park, Cincinnati |
| May 25: PNC Park, Pittsburgh |
| May 26: Marlins Park, Miami |
| May 27: U.S. Cellular Field, Chicago |
| May 28: Wrigley Field, Chicago |
