• The Cincinnati Reds' Sean Casey and the Kansas City Royals' Mike Sweeney are among a number of players who have worked with California optometrist Bill Harrison in his eyetraining program, Slow The Game Down.

•The Baltimore Orioles' Brian Roberts, the majors' second-leading batter entering Thursday (.368), and the Chicago White Sox's A.J. Pierzynski are among more than two dozen big-leaguers fitted with tinted contact lenses developed by Nike and Bausch & Lomb and designed to make the ball stand out.

• The Texas Rangers' David Dellucci in November joined the growing list of players who have had LASIK eye surgery and gives it some of the credit for his American League-leading 41 walks and .462 on-base percentage. He's also batting .283 this year through Thursday, up from a pre-2005 mark of .261. Dellucci's on-base average was .339 before this season while his slugging percenrage has risen from .441 to .551.

Many players, however, who devote countless hours to bodybuilding and mechanics ignore training what some experts say is the most important muscle for hitting: the eyes.
Harrison, whose first convert was Kansas City's George Brett in the 1970s, says players openly discuss their training for mechanics and technique. "But the visual stuff is kind of like weird science to them. They don't necessarily want to talk about it."
Does it raise batting averages 100 points? Of course not. Does it help players focus more on the pitch and, in their minds, give them an edge? Bingo.
"With the technology we have now, why wouldn't a guy try it?" says Baltimore outfielder Jay Gibbons, who improved his vision from 20/35 to 20/10 with LASIK surgery last year. "If you can get a little edge that way and maybe see the ball just a split-second quicker, it makes all the sense in the world."

Training by focusing

The ocular enhancer, used by the Mets' Beltran, was developed by a Chicago-area doctor as an outgrowth of speed-reading exercises for children. The Milwaukee Brewers began using it in the late 1990s, and it has been employed by various teams since. The machine is relatively low-tech - a motor propels tennis balls out a 6-foot pipe. Each ball is inscribed with a number from one to nine, in red or black ink. The hitter, standing about 60 feet away and taking his normal batting stance, tracks the ball to the plate, trying to read the number and color.
"It's an eye-exercise training program to elevate concentration on the ball," says Mike Victorn, the trainer who works with the Mets for the system's owner, the National Baseball and Softball Academy in Wheeling, Ill. "The faster you can read the rotation out of the pitcher's hand, the quicker you can recognize the pitch."
A typical exercise will start shooting the ball at game speed (90 mph) and increase it to 150 mph, with random rotations. When returned to the original speed, and subsequently in live game action, the ball seems much slower and larger to the hitter, Victorn says.
Batters, depending on the exercise, track the ball to the backstop without swinging, bunt with the bat behind their back hip or swing at certain colored/numbered balls. Victorn stresses tracking the ball until contact, which many hitters don't do.
Beltran was introduced to the system by Juan Gonzalez when the Royals brought it into spring training last year. The team didn't have the budget to underwrite the $80,000 plus for a full season, so Beltran, Gonzalez and other players picked up that tab.
With his leverage as a free agent, Beltran negotiated it into his new contract, and several teammates, including Doug Mientkiewicz and Jose Reyes, are taking advantage.
"You start focusing on trying to recognize the numbers and trying to recognize the colors so you don't think about mechanics," Beltran says.
"When the game starts, you try to focus on the ball 100% and not focus on mechanics. If you focus on the ball 100%, it's going to give you time to recognize the pitch and recognize location."
The Cleveland Indians are using it this season, and the gold medal U.S. Olympic softball team trained on it before Athens last summer. The Chicago Cubs had it for spring training and liked it, coaches Gene Clines and Gary Matthews say, but there's no room for the equipment in cramped Wrigley Field.
Strengthening eye muscles Harrison espouses many of the same principles, such as the priority on focus instead of mechanics at the plate and seeing the ball deeper into the pitch until contact. He believes if an athlete can train his eyes to concentrate on what he sees, he can slow down the action.
"The eyes control the mind and the body," he says. "The fastest, best way to improve mechanics and technique is to get players more visual."