Josh Hamilton's Blue Eyes: Does Eye Color Affect Batting Average? (VIDEO)

As the old baseball adage goes, keep your eye on the ball -- especially if your eyes are blue.

A recent ABC News report looks into the increasingly apparent discrepancy between blue-eyed batting averages at day games and those same batting averages at night.

Case in point: former American League MVP and blue-eyed star Josh Hamilton, who hit a whopping 100 points worse at day games during his incredible 2010 season.

"Try to go up [to the plate] squinting and see a white ball while the sun is shining right off the plate, you know, and beaming right up in your face," the slugger says. "I ask guys all the time. Guys with blue eyes, brown eyes, whatever ... and guys with blue eyes have a tough time."

According to researchers, blue or light colored eyes, which have lower density pigment at the back, are less adept at filtering the sun's glare.

So Hamilton is looking for a remedy. The Texas Rangers star has tried sunglasses and ever a set of contact lenses which make his eyes appear red and are designed to help with the glare. (Take a close look at the image above.)

"I've never worn contact lenses in my life and I really would like to see the ball in the daytime, so therefore I'm trying any means possible to do that," Hamilton told ESPN. "I actually care and I want to be better and I don't want to suck in the day."

Here's a full report from ABC News correspondent John Berman:

WATCH:

Comments

[adcan49]

03:24 PM on 06/29/2011

Go Rangers!

[Jazmo]

10:08 AM on 06/29/2011

My eye doctor actually told me something like this, not so much for my batting average but because I was complaining how sun-sensitive my (light colored) eyes are. She told me the same thing, light eyed people have more sensitivity to the sun and the more you are in the sun (I live in SoFla) the worse the sensitivity can get.

[fratricide08]

07:06 PM on 06/29/2011

How bout this - we black and brown eyed peeps drive during the day and y'all blues and light eyes drive at night?

[Jazmo]

10:40 AM on 06/30/2011

LMAO that would be interesting - can we agree no matter what their eye color, if a geriatric is too small to see over the steering wheel they just take the bus?
(nearly got creamed this morning by such a drive - just driving straight ahead, not looking to left or right, craning to see over steering wheel - aaaargh!)

[AliveInNYC]

08:50 AM on 06/29/2011

Baseball has been around for over 100 years and we're just hearing about this theory now? Not buying it.

By the way, someone looked up Mickey Mantle's numbers. He played approximately the same number of day and night games over the course of his career, higher batting average in the daytime, more home runs in the daytime, more RBI's in the daytime.

Buck Showalter may be a great coach but if he would really avoid drafting people because they have blue eyes, he would make a lousy GM.

[Tails]

08:10 PM on 06/28/2011

I'll side with Buck Showalter on this one. If he says something baseball related, I believe it.

[DungBeetle]

08:09 PM on 06/28/2011

I've got a similar theory about pink nipples vs brown.

[CANTHATBE]

07:59 PM on 06/28/2011

Reminds me of Bull Durham. I think just superstition.

If a player thought his good luck was because he likes chicken, The dugout would be full of chickens.