Beep baseball team Long Island Bombers offers camaraderie, competition for blind and visually impaired athletes

As a child, Matthew Puvogel, 40, loved playing Little League baseball.

But the game was often a struggle, as his night and peripheral vision slowly dwindled over time due to a condition called Bardet-Biedl syndrome.

He could manage playing the infield, but in the outfield, the Massapequa Park native said, “I was in trouble. . . . I couldn’t see where the ball was. My parents said I got hit with it a lot.”

His sight declined further in high school, and by college he was using a cane to navigate. His days of playing a team sport, he assumed, were over.

But in 2003, he learned about beep baseball, a national adaptive sport created in 1964 that gives blind and visually impaired athletes the chance to play competitively.

Initially nervous, he didn’t try out for the Long Island Bombers, the only New York-based team out of more than 25 across the country, for another two years.

“I was like, ‘No way, man, I don’t think so,’ ” Puvogel recalled while waiting on deck during a scrimmage at Morgan Days Park in Rockville Centre on an overcast Saturday in August.

Needless to say, Puvogel got over his trepidation. “It’s modified, but this is the closest thing you’re going to get to baseball,” he said. “It’s a real game of trust.”

As his name was announced, Puvogel stepped up to the plate and settled into a batting stance. A blindfold covered his eyes.

BLINDFOLDS LEVEL THE FIELD

Because players have varying levels of vision loss — partially sighted, legally blind and totally blind — everyone must wear a blindfold during the game as a way to level the playing field. The only players not blindfolded are the pitcher and catcher, who are sighted and serve to help the batter make contact and guide the defensive players.

From the mound, Puvogel heard, “Set. Ready. Pitch!” and a one-pound, rapidly-beeping ball was lobbed his way. Without hesitating, he swung his bat and smacked the ball down the middle of the field.

In beep baseball, there are only two bases to run to — first and third — and the hitter has to quickly listen for a loud buzz at either one to determine which direction to go.

Puvogel dashed 100 feet along the first-base line, and 10 feet off the foul line, toward the noise coming from a four-foot-high padded cylinder.

Before the other blindfolded Bombers in the field could track the sound-producing ball — which is bigger and heavier than a typical baseball — and grab hold of it for an “out,” he barreled into the base, landing face-first in the grass.

“Safe!” the umpire called.

With that, Puvogel scored a run — players do not run the bases — and his teammates cheered from the sidelines.

“This is great for physical activity, but it also helps us with social skills,” he said. “When I started to lose my vision, I never knew other blind people like this who were working or had families and were at a level where I wanted to be.”  

RECRUITING IN REGION

The Bombers is a 501c nonprofit supported primarily through fundraising by the Rockville Centre Lions Club, donations and money from games, exhibitions and speaking engagements. The group has spent the past year rebuilding, recruiting younger players and more volunteers and raising awareness of the team.

According to team president James Sciortino, who does not have a visual impairment, many players have “aged out” since the team’s founding in 1997, and there was limited growth on Long Island. The team’s roster of 15 players is the largest ever, he said, and they now practice both on the Island and in Manhattan.

The players range in age from their 20s to 60s. Some were blind from birth while others lost their sight later in life. Some are lifelong baseball fans, while others are new to the sport.

The team is coed, although at the moment there are no female players.

Jay Williams, 25, of Manhattan, said he joined the team in March. Born blind, he has since partially regained some sight.

“For a long time I didn’t accept my eyesight, but when I started playing beep ball, I realized there were a lot of doors there for me,” he said. “I just fell in love with the atmosphere and the people, and I’m just hooked.”  

‘YOU GOTTA LOSE YOUR FEAR’

Melchion Wee-Ellis, 29, who grew up in the Bronx before moving to Roosevelt in his teens, said he has always been visually impaired and lost his vision completely in 2018.

Throughout high school, his passion was running track, particularly the 600 meters. He said he had never played baseball before learning of the Bombers in 2021.

“The freedom of swinging the bat and running as fast as you can to a base . . . I was in so much shock the first time,” he recalled of playing beep baseball. But the best part, he said, has been the camaraderie of the team: “Here, you have other people to hold you up and there’s always high energy. I’ve never experienced it before. Everybody wants to win, and we’re very competitive.”

Among the most competitive is Jimmy Hughes, 55, of Farmingdale, an original Bomber and its captain for the first 20 years.

“I always tell young players, ‘You gotta lose your fear. You have to want to get hit,’ ” the retired Farmingdale High School history teacher said. “Beep ball is not cute, you’re not hitting off a tee, it’s actually real competition.”

Hughes, along with his mother and older brother, has congenital glaucoma and was blind by 3 years old. He said he never found his blindness to be “different or unique. It was just who we were.”

Hughes said he went to a school for the blind, where he learned Braille, before entering public school and getting involved in sports like wrestling and kickball. He said he started playing beep ball in the early 1990s while at Binghamton University.

As serious as he is about winning, Hughes knows that’s not the most important part of the game.

“We want to give hope to other visually impaired people,” he said. “It’s humans coming together in sport, in competition, but also coming together to make something happen that doesn’t usually happen. It’s special.”  

ROLE MODELS

For Elmont-raised brothers Joseph DeJesus, 30, and Chris DeJesus, 32, both legally blind, the Bombers are like family.

The younger DeJesus said he joined the team when he was 15 and found not just teammates but role models.

He is now a corporate lawyer with a degree from Harvard Law School, and said playing beep baseball has been integral to his life’s journey. “I didn’t know too many professionals with jobs who were visually impaired and blind . . . Having someone like Jimmy, who was captain when I joined, was inspiring. He’s definitely a big factor in how I got where I am today.”

Chris DeJesus, who has a PhD in clinical psychology and is an assistant professor at Pace University in Manhattan, echoed the sentiment: “There’s a shared understanding that despite society being shaped in a way that losing your vision is ‘the end’ . . . the end of independence, the end of autonomy . . . In beep baseball, it’s just the beginning.”  

WORLD SERIES

As the team rebuilds, Sciortino said his goal is to compete in the Beep Baseball World Series next year. The team has participated in the past, but did not in 2023 or 2024.

At the same time, Sciortino said, the team prioritizes being inclusive of all players.

“For me, it’s not about the wins and losses, but how this affects people,” said Sciortino, 68, of Franklin Square. “It’s beyond the game itself, it instills confidence and there’s growth in their personal lives because of it. They’re with people like themselves, with the same challenges.”

Sciortino, who is working to introduce the game in Puerto Rico, admitted that he was less enthusiastic when he first heard about beep baseball in the 1980s.

The longtime ballplayer said his mother had a friend whose son played beep ball. Despite her encouragement to watch a game, he recalled, “I was like, ‘Gimme a break. Blind guys playing ball?’ I blew it off . . . But I went to see it once [at Eisenhower Park], and 40 years later, here I am.”

Not only was he impressed by their abilities on the field, Sciortino said he knew that, as a pitcher, he could help them hit the ball well. Not long after that, he became involved with the team he saw, Out of Sight, for which he pitched and coached.

In 1999, he said, he met Ted Fass and Stephen Guerra, two blind athletes who had cofounded the Bombers. He immediately joined, and he said he helped get the team into the World Series.

Up until his death in September 2023, Sciortino said Fass was integral in hosting demonstrations, advocating for the blind and arranging games against sighted teams, who wore blindfolds.  

LOVE OF THE SPORT

At the end of the second scrimmage last month — a battle between the “young guys and old guys” and won by the latter — the full team huddled up and gave thanks to all their supporters, volunteers and coaches.

Braulio Thorne, 64, of Manhattan, one of the senior players of the team, led his teammates in a chant:

“Long Island!”

To which the group shouted back:

“Bombers!”

Thorne, a lifelong baseball fan, said he started playing beep baseball in 1980. He joined the Bombers when they formed.

“Once I found out that I could still play baseball while blind, forget about it. ... It’s all about the love of the sport and trying to do the best with what we have,” he said. “It’s been beautiful.”