By: Adam Morissette

Canadian Baseball Network

GIJANG, Korea- Bumps, bruises, pulled muscles, even broken bones. These are some of the things that a ballplayer might deal with throughout the course of a baseball season. For Women’s National Team pitcher Katie Hagen, these pale in comparison to what she has to overcome on the field.

“I’ve been to several different specialists and they’ve done multiple tests and the conclusion is that my eyes are perfectly healthy,” says the 16-year-old from Dartmouth, Nova Scotia. “But I’m legally blind.”

There’s no technical term for Hagen’s visual impairment other than the fact that she’s legally blind. When she was just four years old, she couldn’t pass the eye test during her grade primary orientation and needed glasses before she could start school.

“I’ve been wearing (glasses) ever since, but my eyes have gotten progressively worse since then,” she said.

Around the time that she started school, Hagen also began her love of baseball, a sport that her grandfather, John Hagen, played professionally in the St. Louis Cardinals organization in 1966.

“I started in tee-ball like everyone else and was using a regular (eye) prescription back then so there weren’t really any issues,” she explained. “It never bothered me up until a Peewee age (12/13) when my eyes started getting worse.”

Picking up signs from the catcher, trying to hit spots as a pitcher are all issues that Hagen must overcome in order to do her job on the mound.

“The signs are the hardest part of pitching for me,” she said. “(The catcher) will paint their fingers and that helps, but the hardest part is when their hand drops too low and everything just blends in with the dirt.”

Setting up a hitter presents a different challenge in terms of what spot Hagen wants to hit in or out of the strike zone. She needs to work with her catcher and their tools of ignorance in order to help her out on the mound.

“I had a catcher last year whose glove was the same colour as his chest protector which made it very difficult for me to see,” she said. “Instead of giving me (the sign for) fastball and away, they had to show fastball and then tap their leg to which side they wanted the pitch so it's easier to figure out.”

A member of the Dartmouth Arrows Bantam AAA club back home, Hagen plays on an all boys team where she also takes her turn at the plate, presenting a different set of circumstances altogether.

“I drive everything to the opposite field because I pick the ball up so late, but it works. I can’t pick the ball up out of the pitcher's hand and usually have four or five feet to react.

“There are some pitchers that are harder to read than others with their delivery, but you get used to it.”

Hagen says that she has supportive teammates on her Dartmouth club who use the lighter side of things to help their teammate.

“All the boys they joke about it, they call me “20/20” and it doesn’t bother me at all,” she said.

At school, where she attends Newbridge Academy in Lower Sackville, Hagen incorporates the use of an iPad to zoom in on material that she wouldn’t be able to see using a textbook.

“Public school was hard because I could never see the textbook (pages),” she explained. “It’s awesome now because everything that’s on paper is on the iPad.”

Away from the classroom, baseball is not the only sport that Hagen excels at as she spent ten years as a competitive swimmer putting up qualifying times that would have landed her a spot at the Parapan Am Games last summer in Toronto.

“I stopped last year because it was a lot, I was swimming nine times a week, before and after school,” she said. “The Parapan Am Games were also at the same time as 16U baseball nationals and I like baseball a lot of more.”

What exactly does she like most about baseball and being a pitcher, Hagen is quick to provide an answer.

“I like that you control the speed of the game and that you’re in the centre of everything (on the mound). Baseball is really exciting.”

Hagen has had a busy summer playing with the Arrows, but has also been to the Dominican Republic where she helped Canada win gold at the U20 Women’s International Cup, followed by appearances at the three Baseball Canada National Championships including 16U, 21U and the Senior Women Invitational.

It was at the Senior Women Invitational in Red Deer two weeks ago that she found out she had made the National Team and would be heading to Korea only days later to represent her country.

“It was a surprise when I found out,” she said. “I was looking (at the list) to see who I knew and found my name at the bottom.

“My parents were in the room and they already knew (I had made the team), so they had to keep it secret from me. It was pretty crazy when I found out.”

Hagen took to the mound last Sunday and pitched all five innings in a win over India. In doing so, she became the youngest player to ever play for Canada in the Women’s Baseball World Cup and had her father, Scott, in attendance to watch the feat, while her mother, Carrie and siblings Douglas, Joey and Chrissie were getting updates at home.

“I get a lot of family support at home, but to have my dad here in Korea is pretty special,” she said.

“This whole (World Cup) experience has been unbelievable. It’s an exciting feeling wearing the jersey. I can’t stop staring at it.”