1964 Phillies rookie John Briggs is now blind. But he refused to let his loss of vision take his spirit.

PATERSON, N.J. — John Briggs was playing catch in the backyard of his home when his son — then a high schooler — tossed him the baseball.

Briggs played 12 seasons in the major leagues after starting his career as a rookie outfielder with the star-crossed 1964 Phillies. He chased down fly balls at Connie Mack Stadium and the Vet, played at Fenway Park and Wrigley Field, and hit home runs at Yankee Stadium.

But he could not see this throw a decade ago in his own yard.

“I lost it,” Briggs said. “I said, ‘Oh shoot. What happened?’ The next thing I knew, the ball was dropping down by me. I said, ‘Oh my god. I lost the ball.’ I was a little embarrassed.”

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Briggs stepped inside and told his wife, who was alarmed enough to schedule him for an eye exam. Briggs signed with the Phillies as a teenager, recorded an OPS better than league average in 10 of his 12 seasons, once went 6-for-6 in a game, and is a member of the Milwaukee Brewers’ Wall of Honor. Suddenly, he couldn’t even play catch.

“The eye doctor said, ‘You need to see a specialist,’” Briggs said. “He didn’t even tell me what the hell was going on. He just gave me the name of the specialist, and it was a glaucoma specialist.”

Briggs, now 80 years old, was diagnosed with glaucoma, an eye condition that damages the optic nerve due to high eye pressure. Briggs first lost his peripheral vision as his sight began to fade. Four years ago, he went completely blind. He saw specialists and underwent a series of surgeries. Nothing helped.

“They just couldn’t stop the car wreck,” Briggs said.

The Phillies signed Briggs in September 1962 for $8,000. His favorite sport was basketball, but his performance at an American Legion tournament drew baseball scouts to his parents’ home in Paterson. The son of a long-distance truck driver, Briggs grew up in the North Jersey town about 20 miles from New York City. He attended the same high school as Larry Doby, the Baseball Hall of Famer who was the American League’s first Black player three months after Jackie Robinson debuted in 1947.

Briggs’ father asked the Phillies to not send him to a farm team in the South, as he wanted to protect his son from the racial tension that Doby and other Black players faced. The Phillies agreed, sent Briggs in 1963 to Bakersfield, Calif., and allowed him to travel for the season’s final weeks with the major-league team. It was a taste of his dream.

“It made me want to be a part of that,” Briggs said.

Briggs learned at the end of spring training in 1964 that he was leaving Florida with the Phillies. Manager Gene Mauch liked the way he ran the bases and told him that he could be a pinch hitter. Briggs, then just 20 years old, was thrilled.

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“I called the whole world,” Briggs said.

The grass at Connie Mack Stadium was pristine, the ballpark was enormous, and the Ballantine scoreboard was massive.

“We were in awe all the time,” Briggs said. “Growing up, you don’t play on grass like that.”

Briggs debuted on April 17 as a pinch runner, recorded his first hit a month later, and didn’t start a game until June. He was a part-time player in 1964 as the Phillies had to keep him in the majors for the entire season or else he’d be placed on waivers. He roomed with Dick Allen and Ruben Amaro and Wes Covington. He befriended Johnny Callison and Art Mahaffey and bonded with fellow rookie Rick Wise. The Phillies were the National League’s best team and everything seemed perfect.

“We were winning games we weren’t supposed to win,” Briggs said.

Briggs’ sons will often shut their eyes and walk around their two-story home, imagining what it’s like to be their dad.

“He has to do that every day,” Julian Briggs said.

Julian and Jalen Briggs were born well after their father’s baseball career ended, and they know of his exploits mostly through old baseball cards.

“We found a YouTube video,” Jalen Briggs said. “It was black-and-white, but it was still useful.”

For them, Briggs was the dad who had a catch in the backyard and then sat in the stands with a video camera. John Briggs captured every jump shot, quarterback sack, and RBI double. His eyesight started failing him when Julian and Jalen were in high school.

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“My sons played sports and he couldn’t see,” said Briggs’ wife, Renvy. “It was his hobby to film their games and that probably hurt him the most.”

But Briggs kept filming as his eyes failed him.

“Whatever they were doing, I was right there with my camera,” Briggs said. “People used to comment about me having my camera, but it was worthwhile to me. It was therapeutic for me.”

He was diagnosed in 2008 with stomach cancer, just as he was retiring from the Passaic County Sheriff’s Department after 25 years. Briggs joined the department after his baseball career ended, met his wife there, and was promoted to lieutenant.

He had surgery to remove his stomach — “I didn’t know you could live without a stomach, but you can,” his wife said — and kept pushing forward. Briggs had to live for his boys, he said. He attacked his vision loss the same way.

“I don’t think I ever got down because I had these two guys here,” Briggs said, pointing to his sons. “I was following them everywhere they went, and I didn’t have time to get down.”

Briggs is blind, but he says he’s fine. He often reminds himself that people have it much worse than he does. He just can’t see. He dresses himself, strolls around his neighborhood, listens to sports on the TV, and even makes his own coffee.

“Thank God for the Keurig,” Renvy said.

Briggs said the attention spent on his stomach cancer caused him to neglect his eyes, as glaucoma can usually be treated if caught early enough. For Briggs, it was too late.

“We didn’t think he would go totally blind,” Renvy said. “It was just so progressive and rapid that there was nothing they could do for him. It was devastating. But his spirits never went down. He never changed.”

The disease took his sight. But Briggs was determined to not let it take him.

“I’m not trying to be a downer and bring everyone else down,” Briggs said. “I just can’t see. I’ll talk to my friends of 50 years, and they’ll say, ‘You have a great attitude.’ I said I have to. What else am I going to do? People see me, but I can’t see them.”

The Phillies were accepting orders for World Series tickets when Briggs misplayed a fly ball in September 1964 against St. Louis, helping to seal another loss as the team’s free fall refused to stop. Chris Short, who pitched on two days’ rest, said after the loss that it felt like a nightmare. Those World Series tickets were worthless.

“It felt like everything that could go wrong in September went wrong,” Briggs said. “I remember we were playing the Braves and their manager, Bobby Bragan, was managing every game that he managed in Philly like it was the World Series. Every game. He was changing pitchers every other guy. They sent us on a tailspin.”

The Phillies lost 10 straight games, blew a 6½-game lead with 12 games to play. They had a chance on the season’s final day to force a playoff for the National League pennant, but they needed the Cardinals to lose.

“The only problem was we had to depend on someone else,” Briggs said. “Which at that time was the lowly New York Mets.”

The Phillies, while thumping the Reds, watched the scoreboard in Cincinnati for updates from the Mets-Cardinals game. The Mets took a lead but it was short-lived. St. Louis won, reached the World Series, and edged the Yankees in seven games for the title the Phillies thought all summer would be theirs.

“It’s part of history,” Briggs said.

Briggs was traded by the Phillies in April 1971 to Milwaukee, where he had the chance to play every day. He spent five seasons with the Brewers and is on the team’s Wall of Honor. He moved to Minnesota in 1975, balked when the Twins tried to cut his pay the next season, and had his contract for 1976 sold to Japan.

Briggs had played in Puerto Rico and learned enough Spanish to talk to his teammates. Japan, he figured, would be the same.

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“I was in for a culture shock when I got there,” Briggs said. “No one on the team spoke English. I had an interpreter with me everywhere I went. I couldn’t order my own food. If the manager wanted to talk to you, you had to have the interpreter with you.”

Briggs, one of two Americans on the team, felt sick during the season and started losing weight. The doctors couldn’t find anything wrong as they told Briggs that his illness was psychosomatic. He went home and a New York doctor told him that he had contracted parasites. His baseball career ended, as the major leagues moved on without him. The only offers he had were in the minors.

“I said, ‘Well, I think it’s time for me to do a 9-to-5,” Briggs said.

A former Phillies teammate helped guide Briggs last month from the dugout to the foul line when the outfielder was introduced as part of the team’s alumni weekend. His sons walked him around the concourse — ”They call me his bodyguard,” Julian said — and Renvy helped him sign autographs.

“He would tell me to hold the ball for the sweet spot,” Renvy said. “I’d say, ‘what’s that?’ Then he would grab the ball and say, ‘In between there.’ He would put his pen there and he would just write his name.”

The afternoon at Citizens Bank Park was a chance for Briggs to revisit his first career. He heard the adulation — “He really enjoys it. He likes the attention when people say, ‘Johnny Briggs. Johnny Briggs,’” Renvy said — and reminisced with his old teammates. He could not see, but the voices of people like Larry Bowa and Bobby Wine are still as distinct as they were more than 50 years ago. Briggs often knew who he was talking to without having to see their face.

He keeps going every day. We’re proud of him. He keeps us motivated to be the best we can be.

“Other guys will say, ‘Hey J.B., it’s so and so,’ and I’ll say, ‘OK.’ Now I know,” Briggs said. “Then we’d move right on. They wouldn’t look at me like I was any different. We would talk like I could look at them.”

The visit also provided a chance for Briggs’ sons to see who their father once was, the big-league ballplayer on the team that flirted with the pennant. He would often tell his boys about his achievements, and they usually just nodded along. Now they were seeing fans stop him.

“They get to see people approach their dad and treat him like he’s a celebrity,” Renvy said. “Before, they were like, ‘Yeah, dad. Whatever.’”

His vision loss failed to alter his outlook, as the only sign of Briggs’ blindness are the large sunglasses he wears. Briggs is the same guy who patrolled the outfield 60 years ago at Connie Mack Stadium. His lack of vision, Briggs said, does not define him. But he would love one more chance to see his sons, the boys he used to play catch with in the backyard. The dad can’t see them anymore. But the brothers certainly can see him.

“He keeps going every day,” Jalen said. “We’re proud of him. He keeps us motivated to be the best we can be.”