Dan Roche spent much of his childhood trying not to be looked at — until a coach noticed what others had missed.
Roche was born with a cataract that left him mostly blind in his right eye. Growing up, he was self-conscious about it and often avoided making eye contact.
" That blind and disfigured eye, more than anything else, shaped my self-identity as a kid," Roche said. "I spent my young years wanting to hook that bad eye out with my fingernail or a pocket knife."
When he was 15, Roche played first base and outfield on a baseball team. He was a solid player in the field, but at the plate, he kept missing. One day at batting practice, his coach — a man known as 'Coach Wells' — watched him take 15 or 20 swings at the ball. Roche missed many of them.
"Then he held up his hand to stop the pitcher, and he walked over to me," Roche recalled. "And he said, 'You're closing your right eye when you swing.'"
"I kind of shrugged at him and I told him I couldn't see out of that eye anyway. But he waited a couple seconds and then he said, 'Try hitting from the other side.'"
Roche stepped into the batter's box for lefties. His teammates took it as a joke and shuffled in closer to watch. But Roche surprised them and himself by hitting the first pitch — and the next dozen.
"I realized in that moment that the advice to 'keep your eye on the ball' was more than just a figure of speech," Roche said.
"What my coach had realized was that ... I was losing sight of the ball several feet before it got to the plate."
Coach Wells moved him back to the right side and repositioned him. He put his hands on Roche's shoulders and nudged his left foot outward, turning him toward the pitcher and opening his stance. By the end of the season, Roche could finally track the ball.
Fifty years later, Roche still thinks about the matter-of-fact way the coach noticed his problem and helped him solve it.
"I think it was one of the few times throughout those years when I felt seen in a way that was honest and nonjudgmental," Roche said.
"Even as an adult, there have been many times when I've struggled to let myself be seen and to make eye contact. And so that coach's kindness just comes back to me fairly regularly," he said.
"I can still feel his fingertips on my shoulders — how comfortable it was to make that observation and to offer that help in the way that he did."
My Unsung Hero is also a podcast — new episodes are released every Tuesday. To share the story of your unsung hero with the Hidden Brain team, record a voice memo on your phone and send it to myunsunghero@hiddenbrain.org.
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