Fire In His Eyes

The Uni Watch column by Paul Lukas at ESPN.com this week uses my photo of Joe Mauer with the gum stuck on his batting helmet. Sad to say, I get no credit. But I guess I'll forgive Lukas since he brings to my attention an especially interesting trend in sports eyewear, modeled here by former Twins catcher A.J. Pierzynski.

A.J. isn't turning into a cyborg or one of the Undead.

He's wearing an amber-tinted lense in his right eye, which filters out UV rays and almost all the light at the blue end of the spectrum. This not only cuts down on glare, but is said to improve contrast clarity and makes the white of the baseball stand out.

A.J. heartily endorses the product developed by Bausch & Lomb and Nike: "It definitely makes the ball stand out a little bit. When you're in the sun, you have to squint a little bit when you wear contacts. It distorts your vision a little bit, whereas when you wear these you don't have to squint."

Of course, the man also is hitting .264/.317/.450, quite a drop from his heyday with the Twins, so maybe there is more to this story than meets the eye.

If A.J. really had become one of the Undead, you wouldn't expect him just to come out and admit it, would you?