A First Pitch Worth Celebrating: Blair Wong Takes the Mound at Polar Park

Baseball and eye health don’t usually share a headline, but this August, they did.

GoodVision USA joined the Worcester Red Sox for the WooSox’s first-ever Eye Health Awareness Night at Polar Park, an evening built around community, generosity, and a cause bigger than any one organization. And when it came time for the ceremonial first pitch, it was thrown by someone whose life’s work has been about helping people see clearly: our own Board President, Blair Wong.

For those who don’t know Blair’s story, it’s worth telling. Blair is a founding board member of GoodVision USA and Department Chair of Eye Health Technology at Franklin Cummings Tech, where he built an opticianry program with a 99.5% job placement rate. He was inducted into the Opticians Association of America Hall of Fame in 2022, and in 2025 was awarded International Optician of the Year by the International Opticians Association Award and the first blind optician to receive the honor in the award’s history.

What makes Blair’s leadership especially meaningful is that his commitment to vision care is personal. Diagnosed with retinitis pigmentosa at age 26, Blair has spent his career turning his own experience with vision loss into a source of insight and purpose, both in the classroom and on our board. As he’s said before, “Having access to sight is a human right.”

So when Blair walked out onto the field at Polar Park, it wasn’t just a fun moment (though it absolutely was that too). It was a fitting tribute to someone who has spent his career making sure people don’t have to go without the ability to see the world clearly, whether that’s a patient in Liberia receiving their first pair of glasses or 8,000 fans watching a first pitch on a summer night in Worcester.

We’re grateful to the WooSox for hosting such a meaningful night, to the event’s sponsor Sullivan Tire & Auto Service and the Boston Renegades, a baseball team made up of blind and visually impaired athletes and volunteer coaches, for standing behind the same cause, and most of all, to Blair, for continuing to show what’s possible when technical excellence meets genuine heart.