Become a Better Baseball/Softball Hitter: Know Your Dominant Eye

I had a hitting breakthrough last night. We were having batting practice when my teammate, Bruce, asked if I knew which was my dominant eye. He said if I knew my dominant eye, I should position my head so it was closest to the pitcher/ball.

Turns out my right eye is dominant which means, ideally, I should hit lefty (since my right eye would be closer to the ball). Well, hitting lefty isn’t something I was going to do at that moment so I made a simple adjustment and rotated my head towards the left and focused on the ball MAINLY WITH MY RIGHT EYE (this is key). From that moment, I saw the ball more clearly and began hitting a steady stream of line drives (vs. fly outs).

Here’s how to determine which eye is dominant:

1. Hold your arms out in front of you.
2. Make a circle by overlapping your hands. You should have a peep sight with the webs of your thumbs, like shown in the photo, and stare at an object in the distance.

   
3. Look at an object through the hole made by your hands, preferably something round like a door knob.
4. Focus on the object, not your hands.
5. Now close one of your eyes. If you still see the object with your left eye open you are left eye dominant. If you still see the object with your right eye open you are right eyed dominant.

FYI, 80% of the population is right eye dominant and a very small percentage have no eye dominance at all (like my switch hitting 15-year old who can crush the ball from either side of the plate).

For more on this topic, read Science Made Simple

Happy hitting,

Mike

P.S. While we’re on the topic of hitting, a pet peeve of mine is watching hitters warm up with a weighted bat. Watch this video and WAKE UP!