Contact lenses

"See the ball," he said.

"Hit the ball." And nobody did that more often than Rose, the sports' all-time hits leader.

But what if you can't see the ball?

That happened to Baltimore Orioles outfielder Jay Gibbons.

"My vision just went on me all of a sudden," he said.

"I was screwed." Same thing with Oakland's Dan Johnson, who accidentally sprayed sunscreen into his right eye last spring and wound up with double vision.

"I used to hit breaking balls — [until] I couldn't see them," recalled Johnson, whose batting average plummeted more than 40 points.

He didn't even try to hit curveball pitches, he said.

"I would just take them, because I would lose them." Johnson did eye exercises during the off-season for up to six hours a day.

The improvement showed in spring training, where he hit .294 with 10 walks before he ended up on the disabled list because of a hip injury.

The episodes proved to be eye-openers for both players who had always taken near-perfect eyesight for granted.

Now, they're among a growing number of professional athletes focusing on new and improved technologies to recover lost vision skills.

Not all the attention is coming from players with damaged or diminished eyesight.

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