OMAHA, Neb. (WOWT) -Just north of Omaha, inside a barn-turned-batting cage, many of the state’s best hitters go to learn from Mark Wetzel.
“He’s the best hitting coach I’ve ever had,” Fort Calhoun junior Tacey Belina declared.
“He’s a great coach,” added Hannah Winans, a junior at Papillion-La Vista South. “He knows exactly what he’s doing.”
“The results speak for themselves,” said Gretna senior Trip Johnson.
With such a keen vision for the game, you’d never know Mark can barely see at all.
“I’m legally blind,” he said. “I have macular degeneration of the retina.”
Wetzel grew up obsessed with baseball, with hopes of becoming the next Mickey Mantle. But his condition forced him to quit the game when he was 14.
“I think at first I was pretty upset, you know, couldn’t play ball anymore.”
But he wasn’t ready to give up his passion for hitting.
“I was looking for something to do,” he said. “Something I could do and be good at. But when I found out I could be good at it, I really took it and ran with it.”
It’s turned into a 40-year career, spanning from teaching young boys and girls, to minor league hitting gigs, to brushes with some of the game’s greatest, including Albert Pujols, and a decades long friendship with Tony Gwynn.
“If you saw me in the grocery store or in a restaurant with my wife, you wouldn’t bring your boy to hit with me. I can’t see my food on my plate sometimes,” Wetzel admitted. “But when I go out in that cage, I can see 20/20 as far as I’m concerned.”
Mark can see using his peripheral vision. Straight ahead, he is able to make out the outline of the batter against the white walls of his barn.
“I can see that profile against the wall,” he said. “I can see any kind of movement, the slightest bit of movement or excess energy or weight shift.”
A phenomenon you have to see to believe.
“People are like how is that possible? There’s no way he can be as good as another hitting coach if he can’t see,” Winans said. “So I just explain it to them. He can’t see but he can put the pieces together.”
Some might even say he has eyes in the back of his head.
“He’s looking at the other cage and he tells me what’s wrong with my swing. It’s insane.”
Connor Gerch is one of Mark’s second-generation students. His father, Andy Gerch is a former outfielder for Nebraska. He started coming to ‘Blind Guy Hitting’ almost 25 years ago.
“It’s like time traveling. Even the drive up here reminds me of driving up with my dad,” Andy said. “For him to overcome his seeing situation and his ability to turn it into something incredible tells you a lot about him and his ability to persevere.”
Mark’s walls are littered with memorabilia and motivation. His lessons, and his story, are about so much more than baseball.
“It really shows the saying, don’t judge a book by it’s cover,” Connor said.
“You should at least give everyone a chance because it could be one of the best things that ever happens to you, as it was for me,” Tacey added.
Mark met a bump in the road and kept going. Now he’s paved the way for thousands of athletes to see things a little differently.
“It’s almost a blessing,” Mark said of his condition. “When it happened I thought, ‘Well, someday I’ll win the lottery.’ There’s going to be a payback somehow. Well I think I’m already living it. Doing what I love to go, being around great people and great kids.”
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