DALLAS — Texas Rangers pitcher Max Scherzer will start Game 7 of the American League Championship Series against the Houston Astros on Monday night. Here's our story from August about Scherzer's unique eyes -- and how he's embraced them all his life:
New Texas Rangers pitcher Max Scherzer settled in for a solid debut Thursday in a win over the Chicago White Sox.
Texas fans got a chance to see the intensity Scherzer is known for, in particular his locked-in demeanor on his pregame walk from the bullpen to the dugout.
Fans also got to see his eyes. And if you haven't watched Scherzer pitch much before Thursday, they likely stood out.
Scherzer has what's known as heterochromia, meaning his eyes are two different colors: His left iris is brown, while his right iris is blue.
Heterochromia in humans is pretty rare – it affects less than 200,000 people in the U.S., according to WebMD. Some people might acquire heterochromia through an injury or another condition, but most people who have it are born with it, or get it shortly after.
Scherzer falls into the latter category.
"He was born with them," Jan Scherzer, Max's mother, told the Kansas City Star in 2006, when Scherzer was a star pitcher at the University of Missouri. "Then he was 4 months old. I looked down at my baby, and he had a blue and green eye. Very clearly. I have pictures and everything. I took him to the pediatrician shortly after that, and he said, `They may go back and forth. They may change again this year.' As the year went on, the blue eye got bluer, and the green eye changed to brown."
(Side note: The Kansas City Star story was about the Royals considering Scherzer for the No. 1 overall pick in that year's draft. Instead, Kansas City picked Luke Hochevar.)
Scherzer has embraced heterochromia through the years, even when he was teased as a kid.
"I've always celebrated it," Scherzer told the AP in 2019, before his Game 1 start in the World Series. "Whether you liked it or not, that's who I am."
The condition is more commonly seen in dogs, rather than humans, and Scherzer has embraced that, too, adopting two dogs who have heterochromia.
"It seems everybody kind of outside the baseball world will always text me photos of, 'Hey, you should get this dog. It's got two different color eyes,'" he told AP. "It makes it easy, there's a lot of dogs out there that have that."
