Antiglare eye black is better than tape

Baseball and football players have claimed for decades that swiping black grease under their eyes helps them peer into a sunny sky to catch a ball. In recent years, the smudges have given way to tidier patches of black tape.

Brian DeBroff and his colleagues at Yale University School of Medicine now report that the black grease really does work–but that the newfangled black-tape patches don’t stand up to the light of day.