VOICE FOR EVERYONE | Share your voice with KSHB 41’s Abby Dodge
In front of the Labor Day crowd at Kauffman Stadium, Cameron Black threw out the first pitch before the Royals faced the Chicago White Sox.
Black was born with limited vision and can now only see some light.
“It was just an absolute thrill to be walking out onto the field,” he said.
As an avid sports fan, Black said he had dreamed of this day for years.
While he has never watched a game of baseball on television, he regularly listens on the radio.
The descriptions given by broadcasters, like Jake Eisenberg, provide him context and paint the picture.
“There is a good amount of time where there isn’t necessarily action that’s happening,” Eisenberg said. “It’s a little bit different than football or basketball. The beauty of that is you wind up with this blank canvas.”
Eisenberg said he keeps the visually impaired community in mind each time he calls a game.
“The blind community is a community that I think of when we are calling games on the radio. Those are people who can’t see, whether they are at the game or listening at home,” Eisenberg said. “They have a similarity with every single listener we have on the radio. Description is of the utmost importance for them, above anybody else.”
Black appreciates the broadcasters, but he said the ambient noise of a game is his favorite.
“The snap of the glove. The crack of a bat. Those sounds mean everything to me,” he said.
Black moved to KC from Oklahoma in 2015 — the year the Royals won the World Series — and quickly became a fan of all metro sports.
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