A college baseball player is moving from catcher to pitcher after suffering a permanent eye injury in a freak batting-cage accident.Â
Five games into the ongoing NCAA season, University of Connecticut’s Connor Lane was taking live batting practice when he made awkward contact with the ball.Â
‘I took a swing on a pitch and foul tipped and [it] went into my eye,’ Lane told WTNH. ‘I have a blind spot in my eye now for the rest of my life.’
Huskies head coach Jim Penders told the station he’d ‘never seen anything like it.’
A sophomore from Old Saybrook, Connecticut, Lane now requires special safety glasses to play, although he can continue driving, he told WTNH.
‘My center vision in my right eye is gone, but I still have peripheral vision,’ Lane said. ‘I’m wearing these specs and glasses to be extra precautious.’
Connor Lane was the top baseball player in Connecticut as a high school senior in 2024Â
The Old Saybrook native is pictured as a high school senior after committing to UConn
Lane, now a sophomore, is pictured in an ESPN promotion before a February game in ArizonaÂ
The bigger problem for Lane, considered a major league prospect at catcher, was a change of position. Due to partial blindness in his right eye, Lane no longer sees himself as a backstop, but as a pitcher instead.
‘The first thing I said actually, to our trainer, Catie [Dann], was at least I can still pitch,’ he told WTNH.
Lane had a solid freshman season at the plate, appearing in 31 games for the Huskies while batting .278 with five home runs, a .315 on-base percentage and an impressive slugging percentage of .546.
But Lane’s MLB dreams have not been completely derailed by his move to the mound.
He recently pitched in an inter-squad game, hitting the mid-90s on the radar gun, as he told WTNH. What’s more, the 2024 Connecticut Gatorade High School Player of the Year posted an impressive 0.83 ERA with 68 strikeouts in 33.2 innings pitched as a senior at Old Saybrook High School in 2024.
For Lane, this marks the second major setback of his young athletic career. The 6ft 3in righty had a blood clot in his throwing shoulder in 2025, according to WTNH.
The Huskies are now 22-20 heading into Friday’s game against Georgetown in Washington. It’s unclear if and when Lane will be available out of the bullpen.
