BOOK

There may be no bigger underdog in sports than a blind baseball player. But when the best “Beep Baseball” team in America, the Austin (Texas) Blackhawks, takes on their rival, Taiwan Homerun, no one’s thinking about disability.

As the guys tackle a buzzing base to score and smother the beeping ball on defense, they compete in a way that has been mostly denied to blind people in the past. But that doesn’t mean Beep Baseball is about sentimental uplift. These players are as salty as those in any major league clubhouse—swearing, cheating, and fighting their way toward a championship.

Can Austin’s Lupe Perez channel his temper and lead his team to victory? Will Joe “Way Back” McCormick, who lost his vision right before his senior prom, take Boston into the final four and finish classes at Harvard on time? Can Ethan (Esubalew) Johnston, who was kidnapped and intentionally blinded as a child in Ethiopia, find a new home in the friendly confines of Beep Baseball?

In Beep: Inside the Unseen World of Baseball for the Blind, we find out what the sport of Beep Baseball does for these underdogs, but also what it does to them. As they exchange their canes for baseball bats, it’s all just baseball as usual—with a big twist.

Hardcover available from Swallow Press

Buy BEEP

“Wanczyk gets it—that disability is a cultural formation and not a defect. The book offers a great example (much in the manner of early Tom Wolfe) of entering a relatively unknown and essentially closed world and making it entirely compelling and fully realizable for the general reader. It’s unusual, witty, and quite needed.” —Stephen Kuusisto, author of Planet of the Blind

Support for Beep

Reviews/newspaper features, radio & TV
REVIEWS/NEWSPAPER FEATURES

• ​Joe Blundo: Book reveals intense world of baseball for the blind
  The Columbus Dispatch
• How a blind man became an American baseball star
  The New York Post
• The Spirit of the Game
  Los Angeles Review of Books
• Book Bag: ‘Beep: Inside the Unseen World of Baseball for the Blind’ by David Wanczyk
  Daily Hampshire Gazette, Northampton, MA
• ​Greenfield native pens heartwarming book about baseball for the blind
  The Recorder, Greenfield, MA

RADIO

• WBZ in Boston

TV

• ​New England Sports Network
• WEAU in Eau Claire Wisconsin

Readings at:

• Porter Square Books (Cambridge, MA)
• Silver Unicorn Books (Action, MA)
• Amherst Books (Amherst, MA)
• White Whale Books (Pittsburgh, PA)
• Grandview Heights Public Library (Columbus, OH)
• Athens Public Library (Athens, OH)

Presentations at:

• The National Baseball Hall of Fame (Cooperstown, NY)
• The Thurber House (Columbus, OH)
• Books by the Banks (Cincinnati, OH)
• Society for American Baseball Research Conference (Pittsburgh, PA)

Scheduled to appear at:

• Southern Utah University
• Brigham Young U
• Idaho State U
• Brigham Young U - Idaho
• Marshall U

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MORE SUPPORT FOR BEEP 

• Leader Telegram — Gimme 5: Author explores the athletes and idea behind Beep baseball (July 29, 2018) (Text)
• Reid My Mind Radio — Let's Play Ball...Beep Baseball! (Audio)
• One Life Radio — Beep: Inside the Unseen World of Baseball for the Blind – CBD & Death by High Fructose Corn Syrup  (May 30, 2018) (Audio)
• WOUB — Ohio University’s David Wanczyk Speaks on “Beep: Inside the Unseen World of Baseball for the Blind” (May 7, 2018) (Audio)
• New Books Network — Beep, Inside the Unseen World of Baseball for the Blind (May 3, 2018) (Audio)​