Gearing up for Beepball!

Research says one of the most difficult things to do in sports is to hit a fastball, but have researchers ever tried to hit a fastball
blindfolded? Now THAT’S competition at its best! But who would ever think of going up to the plate with a blindfold on? Beepball
players, that’s who!

The Minds Eye Beepball Committee is busy preparing for the Second Annual Beepball
Tournament this spring! Beepball is blind baseball that is played with eight blindfolded players per team. Two sighted spotters play with the defensive team and a sighted pitcher and catcher play with the offensive team. This spring, eight local companies will battle it out to see who will play the St. Louis Beepbirds, a team of blind and visually impaired players, in the Ultimate St. Louis Beepball Championship Game at Grizzly Stadium!

We would like to invite anyone and everyone to come out and join in the fun! Tournament games for the East Side teams will take place starting at 12:00 p.m. on May 3rd at St. Simon the Apostle Church in St. Louis, Mo. Tournament games for the West Side teams will take place starting at 12:00 p.m. on May 4th at Laderman Park in Belleville, Ill. The East-West Championship will begin at 10:00 a.m. on May 17th at Laderman Park. Finally,
the Ultimate Beepball Championship will begin at 2:00 p.m. on June 29th at the GCS (Grizzly) Stadium in Sauget, Ill. Please come
out and enjoy the games! All proceeds from Beepball will directly benefit Minds Eye.

Later thismonth is National Volunteer Week and Minds Eye is celebrating the successes and hard work of our volunteers along with agencies who utilize
the services of volunteers all throughout the country. Broken down into its simplest form, volunteering is simply people helping others – the concept has been around for ages. Minds Eye has a strong and proud history of volunteer service. Since day one in 1973, Minds Eye has been blessed by the services of volunteers who read the programs we can provide to our listeners. Fromthe daily newspapers, tomagazines like Time and People, to popular books, and my favorite – the grocery store ads, the volunteers of Minds Eye make sure that high-quality programming is available to the blind and print disabled clients we serve twenty-four hours a day.

Did you know that reading isn’t the ONLY thing the volunteers of Minds Eye do? The office of Minds Eye simply could not run without the services of a few very dedicated volunteers who, between just three of them, put in 588 hours of time last year into making sure radios were sent and returned and all of our files were complete, up-to-date, and in the correct place. Others plan our special events like our recent and hugely
successful Soiree pour la Vue and upcoming Beepball Tournament presented by Allsup, Inc. These events help provide much needed financial support to help support our mission and help bring greater awareness to the community about what we do. One group of people who few realize are actually volunteers is our Advisory Board. This group is dedicated to making sure that Minds Eye continues to provide high-quality
programming with careful stewardship of our limited funds. Without this group providing oversight and guidance, Minds Eye wouldn’t have the standards and success that we do now. Finally, we have volunteers to do specialized jobs, like our producers who prepare the newspapers for reading, listener outreach volunteers who call our listeners to talk about our service, and even people who help repair radios.

People often ask me what the impact of our volunteers’ service is on Minds Eye and our listeners. Take a look at the numbers: 9,896 hours, 211 people, thousands of dollars raised. But to really know the truth, listen to one of our clients: “The volunteers are my eyes,” says Rebecca from St. Louis, Mo. Without our volunteers, we wouldn’t be able to provide all of the information to the blind and print disabled that they have come to rely on. So, this month and every month be sure to thank those volunteers you meet; our station and our world wouldn’t be the same without them.

mindsEye...bringing printed words to life