The Vision of Greatness

In the early 1990s, a man named Louis Rosenbaum began analyzing the
eyesight of Major League baseball players. He soon found out that
professional baseball players were nothing like the normal person when
it came to vision.

According to Rosenbaum's research, the average eyesight of a Major

League position player is 20/11. In other words, the typical professional
baseball player can read letters from twenty feet away that a normal
person can only read from eleven feet away. Ted Williams, who is
widely regarded as the greatest hitter in the baseball history, reportedly
had 20/10 vision when he was tested by the military during WWII. The
anatomical limit for human vision is 20/8.

Most of Rosenbaum's research was conducted on the Los Angeles

Dodgers baseball team. According to him, “Half of the guys on the
Dodgers' Major League roster were 20/10 uncorrected.” 
Eyesight and visual acuity results of professional baseball players from 1993 to 1995. The data
above includes both minor league and major league players. (Source: American Journal of
Ophthalmology. November 1996.)

In his excellent book, The Sports Gene, author David Epstein explains

that this visual trend holds true at each level of the sport. On average,
Major League players have better vision than minor league players who
have better vision than college players who have better vision than the
general population. 

If you want to play professional baseball, it helps to practice like

DiMaggio, but you also need eyesight like an eagle. In highly
competitive fields, deliberate practice is often necessary, but not
sufficient for success.

The Deliberate Practice Myth

The myth of deliberate practice is that you can fashion yourself into
anything with enough work and effort. While human beings do possess a
remarkable ability to develop their skills, there are limits to how far any
individual can go. Your genes set a boundary around what is possible.

In recent decades, behavioral geneticists have discovered that our genes

impact nearly every human trait. We are not merely talking about
physical characteristics like height and eyesight, but mental abilities as
well. Your genes impact everything from your short-term memory
abilities to your mental processing speed to your willingness to practice.

One of my favorite examples is tennis great Steffi Graf. When she was
tested against other elite tennis players as a teenager, she not only scored
the highest on physical attributes like lung capacity and motor skills, but
also on competitive desire. She was that once-in-a-generation talent who
was both the most-gifted and the most-driven person on the court. 

During a conversation I had with Robert Plomin, one of the top

behavioral geneticists in the world, he said, “It is now at the point where
we have stopped testing to see if traits have a genetic component
because we literally can't find a single one that isn't influenced by our
genes.”

If you want to learn more about the power of behavioral genetics, this
audio interview with behavioral geneticist Robert Plomin explains how
genes impact our daily habits and behaviors.

How big is the influence of genes on performance? It's hard to say.

Some researchers have estimated that our genes account for between 25
percent to 35 percent of our differences in performance. Obviously, that
number can vary wildly depending on the field you're studying.

So where does this leave us?

Well, while genetics influence performance, they do

not determine performance. Do not confuse destiny with opportunity.
Genes provide opportunity. They do not determine our destiny. It's
similar to a game of cards. You have a better opportunity if you are dealt
a better hand, but you also need to play the hand well to win.