“When I was three months old, they diagnosed me as being blind.  They said, it was basically from damage to the optic nerve.  And I’ve been blind ever sense.  But, that doesn’t define who I am.  It’s not a disability.

From the time I was three, I was in preschool.  My parents decided that they were gonna raise me as like normal kid.  I was gonna do the same things that my sighted friends were doing.  Not being raised any differently than a sighted person, has really helped me in life, and has gotten me to where I am today.

My parents encouraged me to do anything and everything I wanted to do.  I mean, you know, when I was in eighth grade my parents were working the concession stand at my brother’s baseball game and I was in there, you know, I was helping.  But for some reason, to this day I still don’t know what it was, but I heard the guy announcing the players’ names.  And I was like, you know I want to try that.  So I went up there and I was like, can I announce one batter?  One batter is all I want to do, I just want to see what it feels like.  So he let me announce a batter, and then he said, I’ll read names out to you, the job is yours.

And then from that point on, up through my senior year of high school, I was the public address announcer for all of our home baseball games. Once I got into high school, I traveled with the baseball team keeping stats and things like that.  It’s like I’ve always said, sports to a blind person, unless the games are somewhat adapted, they can’t play ‘em.  No blind person would ever play baseball in college, because the game is too fast.  They can’t modify it that much.  But there are ways for a blind person to participate.  To be able to say, I participated in a high school sport is really a neat thing for me.

I didn’t really have that many friends in high school, but when I got to college, I made it my goal from day one to get out and meet people.  And in college, they don’t mind.  You know by the time you get to college you understand, hey this kid is visually impaired, but in reality he’s just a normal person.  There’s nothing different about him versus me, except I can see and he can’t.  Lets hang out with this guy, ‘cause he’s really cool.  The people in college understood that, and that, that was huge to me.

The biggest thing that I would say is, keep battling.  You know, because, if you put your mind to doing something you can do it.  And, if you think you can do something, but people tell you that you can’t, you can still do it.  If you wanna do something, or think you can do something, all you gotta do is put your mind to it.  Nobody’s gonna feel sorry for you.  Nobody’s gonna do it for you.  If you want it, you gotta go out and do it.  You gotta do the dirty work.  But without confidence in yourself, you can’t do it.

Who would have ever thought that a blind person could call baseball games.  But it happened.  You know, most people don’t think a blind person can do a job, but they can.”