Guiel getting a better look

The pain and swelling are gone. So are the stigmatisms on both of Aaron Guiel's eyes that blurred his vision so bad that at times that he thought he was looking through wax paper as a 90 miles per hour fastball whizzed by his face.

But thanks to recent laser eye surgery, the Stars talented outfielder from Vancouver, B.C., finally has his sight back ... almost.

"As soon as my vision clears up a little bit, I'll be back," Guiel said before Tuesday night's 11-6 loss to the Omaha Royals at Cashman Field."It could be another week or two, but I can hardly wait to play again."

It's been a frustrating season for Guiel, who was hitting .260 with no home runs and eight RBI in 36 games before going on the disabled list with on June 9 with vision problems. Amazingly, he had a three-game hitting streak at the time.

Amazing because Guiel really had no business being anywhere near a playing field with his bad sight. Stigmatisms on both eyes made it difficult for corrective contacts to remain in place on Guiel's cornea and special perscription eyeglasses also failed to solve the problem.

"If you can't judge the speed or the spin of the ball, you don't have much of a chance," Guiel admitted. "I was just missing balls or I was just late on my swing."

So Guiel, who hit .329 at double-A Midland with 22 homers and 85 RBIs a year ago, decided to give laser surgery a try last week. Dr. Skip Stanton, the Padres' team ophthalmologist, performed the surgery in San Diego.

"You sit in this chair, like at a dentist's office," Guiel said. "Then they clamp your eye-lids wide open and you look at this red dot. Then they laser away a layer off of your eye."

Doesn't sound like a whole lot of fun, does it?

"When the laser hits (the eye) it smells like burning hair, only about 10 times worse," Guiel said. "It didn't hurt at the time because they put these numbing drops on your eye. But about three hours later, after the numbing drops wore off, the pain just drives you crazy and your eyes get swollen."

A week later, Guiel was back at Cashman Field playing long toss with his teammates and looking forward to the day when he could resume his career.

"I'm looking forward to when he can take batting practice again," said Stars manager Jerry Royster. "To me it's just remarkable that he left to have eye surgery the other day and now he's back and there's no sign that anything ever happened."

Royster had big plans for Guiel at the start of the season. He batted him third in his Opening Night lineup and played him in right-field.

"I liked what I saw at spring training," Royster said. "He was my No. 3 hitter, which says a lot."

Guiel wants to prove Royster's assessment was right ... when he finally is 100% again.

"I learned before that until (his vision) is perfect, there's no use going out there," Guiel said. "I want to be able to go out and help the team. I just had to put my dream on hold for a month."

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