He's one in 500. That's what the doctors say. Max Scherzer has heterochromia. His eyes are different colors. His right eye, the blue one, gleams with energy, like a hungry wolf's. The brown eye is the watchful one, deep and refined like a walnut finish, the perfect color to unnerve someone with a stare.
Really, he's just a genetic anomaly . . .
Mom had blue eyes. Dad had blue eyes. Of course Max would.
"He was born with them," said Jan Scherzer, Max's mother. "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.
"And it was amazing. That night, on Johnny Carson, the actress Jane Seymour was on. She had different-colored eyes. It was just such a coincidence. She was talking about all the flak she'd taken growing up. She's a beautiful woman. She did OK. We always made a big deal to Max that he was special, that it wasn't something wrong."
In grade school, when Max drew a cat or dog or giraffe, he always chose dissimilar colors for their eyes. On parent-teacher night, Brad and Jan could immediately tell which drawing hanging on the wall was their son's.
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