### Hear­ing with Your Eyes

Being deaf in a pre­dom­i­nant­ly hear­ing world presents unique chal­lenges, but it also offers advan­tages that are often over­looked. For instance, ambi­ent noise that dis­tracts hear­ing individuals—like in a loud bar or a sports stadium—does not affect deaf sign­ers. This allowed deaf scu­ba divers to con­verse effort­less­ly under­wa­ter and deaf foot­ball play­ers to neu­tral­ize the crowd’s noise, pre­vi­ous­ly a for­mi­da­ble ‘twelfth man’ on the field.

Trevin Adams, the Cubs’ quar­ter­back, viewed his deaf­ness as an asset. With no audi­to­ry dis­trac­tions from trash talk, play­er com­mu­ni­ca­tion became stream­lined, enabling bet­ter con­cen­tra­tion. His expe­ri­ence echoed the thoughts of oth­er deaf indi­vid­u­als who reject the notion of deaf­ness equat­ing to dis­abil­i­ty. For them, adver­si­ty enhances resilience, lead­ing to a men­tal­i­ty focused on over­com­ing chal­lenges rather than lament­ing their cir­cum­stances.

The Cubs devel­oped unique solu­tions around the foot­ball game’s demands like adapt­ing the snap count typ­i­cal­ly sig­naled ver­bal­ly. His­tor­i­cal adap­ta­tions like using a bass drum were test­ed but lat­er replaced by a sys­tem where the quar­ter­back clapped his hands for rhythm, allow­ing play­ers to respond visu­al­ly rather than rely­ing on sound. This required pre­cise visu­al coor­di­na­tion, some­thing deaf play­ers had honed due to the reliance on visu­al cues in their dai­ly lives.

More­over, stud­ies sug­gest indi­vid­u­als who are pro­found­ly deaf may pos­sess enhanced periph­er­al vision and bio­log­i­cal move­ment per­cep­tion. This height­ened visu­al acu­ity cre­at­ed strate­gic advan­tages on the foot­ball field, allow­ing the Cubs to react more swift­ly to plays.

Sign lan­guage fur­ther enriched the team’s com­mu­ni­ca­tion, grant­i­ng them the abil­i­ty to con­vey com­plex strate­gies unno­ticed by oppo­nents. This came in handy when the Cubs inte­grat­ed a cod­ed sign sys­tem to keep plays con­fi­den­tial from teams bring­ing inter­preters. With fast-paced ASL con­ver­sa­tions, they could exe­cute plays quick­ly, elim­i­nat­ing the need for tra­di­tion­al hud­dles, which often slow down the game.

One mem­o­rable strat­e­gy show­cased their inge­nu­ity: dur­ing a crit­i­cal play, the quar­ter­back deceived oppo­nents with coor­di­nat­ed sign­ing that divert­ed atten­tion before exe­cut­ing a suc­cess­ful touch­down pass. Coach Kei­th Adams emerged proud of this tac­tic, mark­ing a notable suc­cess of the Cubs on the field, high­light­ing how they turned poten­tial chal­lenges into cel­e­brat­ed vic­to­ries.