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Handedness in sports offers an interesting example of both nature and nurture. Which hand you throw with seems to be quite innate. On the other hand, how you swing a stick two handed seems influenced by your culture. In baseball and golf, most players who throw right-handed swing the bat or golf club with their left side forward. (But plenty of right-handed baseball players take a stance with their right side forward, and natural righthander Phil Mickelson plays golf with his right side forward.)
But in ice hockey, right handers tend to shoot with their right sides forward so they can put their dominant hand higher up on the stick for more control. Hence among Canadian-born major league baseball players, 42% of right handed throwers bat “left handed” compared to 19% of right handed throwers born in the United States.
Colby Cosh has the details.
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Yes, this is well known among hockey players. My guess is that Phil Mickelson played Canadian hockey before he played golf, and that is why he holds golf clubs left-handed.
But at a gun class a couple years back, they made everyone determine their dominant eye. I don't remember exactly how they did it, but they had you look through some kind of sight with the other eye closed. When I did it with my left eye, I could see the target fine. But with my right eye, I couldn't see it at all. Gun guys probably know what I'm referring to.
That ain't socially constructed.Replies: @res
Definitely true.
I’m a lefty.
Writing: left hand.
Golf: lefty
Baseball: lefty but taught myself to hit from the right side. Not particularly challenging.
Hockey: righty. Seems more natural to play this way.
Guitar: righty. Fingering the frets seems the harder task so better to do this with your dominant hand.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_musicians_who_play_left-handedReplies: @Bill Jones
My one useful thought here: I think it's goodness for people to practice doing stuff with their off hand and the other way around. I think it's good to work your brain.
Okay, I’ll bite. (Again, as I’ve written about this here before.)
I’m pretty sure I was born naturally right-handed, because by the time I was in kindergarden I already played neighborhood baseball using a right-hander’s glove, and I was learning to write with my right hand.
Then, a very bad car accident made me left-handed. A steering link on our Triumph TR-3 somehow broke or became disconnected, and my mother could not steer the car. It was nighttime, and she was driving my sister and me through a fast chicane in a highway in Huntington Beach.
We went off the road and rolled over, landing upside down. The British roadster’s convertible top was folded down, so we crashed upside down with no top. Amazingly, all three of us lived. My 13-year-old sister lost her front teeth. My right arm was broken in two places. Mom only suffered some cuts on her forehead, but she was trapped in her lap belt under the car while gasoline leaked out of the tank.
Anyway, my right arm was in a cast for months, and had to be reset and put in a cast again. This was the time when I was learning how to right, how to throw, and how to do a lot of things.
I became left handed. When the cast was off, my father had to buy me a new baseball glove, one for a left-handed thrower, because that’s what I had become.
I wrote, threw, hit, played golf even, left-handed ever since.
However, after I finished college, my father noted how bad my hand writing was, and he suggested I try to learn how to write with my original hand. I took his advice, and it only took me about a week or less to learn how to write (including cursive, BTW, for all you disadvantaged youngsters) with my right hand.
But I still swing a bat and a golf club left-handed.
I swing an ax both ways, because I learned to do that in the Forest Service. You see, when you can do that, you can do twice as much work. At least I could.
Oh, I bet you do!
I had no idea Big Mick was right-handed. Swinging a baseball bat left-handed feels natural, whilst swinging a leftie golf club feels clumsy in the extreme. I own a set of leftie clubs and tried them at the range several times and it never gets easier. I don’t know how a rightie mastered lefthand golf.
I remember that catching a baseball with my gloved left hand felt awkward and dangerous as an eight-year-old first learning baseball; after about three weeks playing catch with my dad, it felt natural – and still does.
Why so many left-handed actors? It’s noticeable.
Obama, Clinton, George HW Bush, Reagan, Ford, Truman…Replies: @Redneck Farmer, @Ghost of Bull Moose
I have an idea for a science fiction story where most people (like between 90% and 99%) are basically NPCs – something like robots or ChatGPT “stochastic parrots” – statistical robotic word generators – whereas the remainder are “real” conscious, sentient beings.
These people, like left-handers, are born more or les at random into the same families as the NPCs. Being born “real” in this world is like being born into a semi-solipsistic Matrix universe, where most of the people are actually programs. The trick, in some sense, is finding the 5% who are real flesh-and-blood people who are plugged into the Matrix like you (other “Coppertops”) and which are just NPC chatbots. It’s hard to tells so you need some sort of voight-kampff test to distinguish.
I’m not sure what the distinguishing characteristic would be, but perhaps the ability to really think for yourself and/or engage in genuine creative – rather than just derivative – thought and behaviors.
There are certain tells that you’re interacting with an LLM, certain mistakes that they’re prone to make, like lack of logic/state-persistence and an inability to do math. They’re also highly politically correct and prone to lecture you and/or qualify everything with large amounts of PC verbiage. (They’re like 14 year old girls. Perhaps because (1) they’ve been trained on text produced by 14 year old girls but also (2) because 14 year old girls are themselves well understood as unthinking stochastic parrots of PC orthodoxy. I think both hold.) They can even be “hacked” into revealing the boilerplate to their internal prompt engine – e.g., instructions telling it to always generate diverse images even when explicitly asked to produce images containing only white people. So, approaches like this may also be operable with the NPCs in my story.
(You could also imagine a video game (in a setting like Minecraft or World of Warcraft) where part of your task is to literally figure which characters are operated by other real human players and which are just LLM-operated-NPCs.)
But, come to think of it, looking at the world around us I rather suspect that this “science fiction dystopia” is precisely the world in which we actually live. I wouldn’t claim that people who are (regularly derided) as being “proles” or “NPCs” are really just “programs” in our “Matrix” – and devoid of qualia and consciousness – I’d just claim that their level of genuine ability for independent thought is basically exactly as if that were all that they were capable of. Notably, prole/NPC people can be quite smart, or at least seem so, (just as LLMs do) but that doesn’t make them not proles/NPCs.
These people were programmed by the television, media, Hollywood and K-12 schooling and show little capability (or inclinatino) for independent thought on (esp.) certain sensitive subjects into which they’ve been indoctrinated. This is particularly true on matters which are the most important to the media cartelists who bought up and control the public discourse.
Presumably, if these people were born into KJU’s North Korea or into a Puritan colony they’d be the “most bigoted adherents of the Party, the swallowers of slogans, the amateur spies and nosers-out of unorthodoxy” in Orwell’s parlance.* But, they just happen to be born into the modern West and thus absorb modern orthodoxy instead – things like the goodness of “diversity and multiculturalism” and certain unquestionable narratives around WWII.
It’s popular to talk about people being on a left-right political axis, but there’s another axis also: the conformist/non-conformist axis. People who are genetically highly conformist would be SS officers if born into Nazi Germany, stalwart communist functionaries if born into the USSR, advocates of slavery if born into the Antebellum South and strident opponents of slavery if born into a Radical Republican family in New England.
If you find yourself basically believing the orthodoxy in your time and place (or holding opinions which are only within its (inevitably?) narrow Overton window) then there are two possibilities (1) you *are* capable of independent thought and your time and place – unlike every other – just happens to be correct about everything or (2) you are just an NPC/conformist (like ~90% of people) who basically believes whatever you’re conditioned to believe. Probably in excess of 80% of people fall into the latter category in every time and place.
* https://www.goodreads.com/quotes/258683-winston-had-disliked-her-from-the-very-first-moment-of
I’m a lefty.
Writing: left hand.
Golf: lefty
Baseball: lefty but taught myself to hit from the right side. Not particularly challenging.
Hockey: righty. Seems more natural to play this way.
Guitar: righty. Fingering the frets seems the harder task so better to do this with your dominant hand.Replies: @Corpse Tooth, @Anonymous, @Mike Tre, @pirelli, @AnotherDad, @Pop Warner
I’m thinking all this “hand” and “handedness” and “swing a stick” talk is not about sports. It’s about [censored by Filipino moderator] subliminal, in the subtext.
I'm pretty sure I was born naturally right-handed, because by the time I was in kindergarden I already played neighborhood baseball using a right-hander's glove, and I was learning to write with my right hand.
Then, a very bad car accident made me left-handed. A steering link on our Triumph TR-3 somehow broke or became disconnected, and my mother could not steer the car. It was nighttime, and she was driving my sister and me through a fast chicane in a highway in Huntington Beach.
We went off the road and rolled over, landing upside down. The British roadster's convertible top was folded down, so we crashed upside down with no top. Amazingly, all three of us lived. My 13-year-old sister lost her front teeth. My right arm was broken in two places. Mom only suffered some cuts on her forehead, but she was trapped in her lap belt under the car while gasoline leaked out of the tank.
Anyway, my right arm was in a cast for months, and had to be reset and put in a cast again. This was the time when I was learning how to right, how to throw, and how to do a lot of things.
I became left handed. When the cast was off, my father had to buy me a new baseball glove, one for a left-handed thrower, because that's what I had become.
I wrote, threw, hit, played golf even, left-handed ever since.
However, after I finished college, my father noted how bad my hand writing was, and he suggested I try to learn how to write with my original hand. I took his advice, and it only took me about a week or less to learn how to write (including cursive, BTW, for all you disadvantaged youngsters) with my right hand.
But I still swing a bat and a golf club left-handed.
I swing an ax both ways, because I learned to do that in the Forest Service. You see, when you can do that, you can do twice as much work. At least I could.Replies: @Corpse Tooth, @onetwothree, @Dmon, @ScarletNumber
“I swing an axe both ways …”
Oh, I bet you do!
Batting: Both
Throwing: Rightie
Getting In Touch With The Unemployed: Leftie
Lefties look cooler in every sport except boxing. Southpaws look awkward as hell.
Coolest leftie batter? Reggie Jackson. Even striking out the guy looked cool.
Coolest leftie quarterback? Tough one but I go with Stabler.
And Presidents:
Obama, Clinton, George HW Bush, Reagan, Ford, Truman…
Also homosexuals, twice as many m-to-f trannies, pedophiles.
Children with cerebral palsy, other disorders.
Maybe actors tend lefty because they're used to adjusting to unfamiliar conditions. And it requires verbal facility.
Lots of exceptional people are left-handed. It's noticeable in daily life, too. They're interesting.Replies: @deep anonymous
I’m a lefty.
Writing: left hand.
Golf: lefty
Baseball: lefty but taught myself to hit from the right side. Not particularly challenging.
Hockey: righty. Seems more natural to play this way.
Guitar: righty. Fingering the frets seems the harder task so better to do this with your dominant hand.Replies: @Corpse Tooth, @Anonymous, @Mike Tre, @pirelli, @AnotherDad, @Pop Warner
Don’t think so–the fretting hand goes into a wider variety of positions, but it doesn’t have to move through three dimensions as precisely and meaningfully as the plucking/strumming hand, because that hand actually generates the sound–dynamics, rhythm, tone, etc. In fact, as far as I know, all cultures that play lute-type string instruments assign the task of stopping the strings to the left hand and plucking/bowing to the right hand. The electric guitar might have the easiest right hand of all of these simply because it is not necessary to put much energy into it to be heard, but it still seems to me that the right hand is the limiting technical factor for most guitarists in most contexts (i.e. not playing big jazz chords or polyphony.)
The observation that which hand you throw with seems more of an innate thing than which hand you bat with matches my experience as the father of a lefty: he first learned to bat righty by following me and is still a passable switch hitter, but even as a toddler he always threw with his left hand.
There are plenty of switch hitters in the big leagues. Have there been switch pitchers? I suppose needing to have a glove on one hand or the other would make that really hard.
If you’re a righty who’s played tennis and learned the one-hand backhand and tried hitting in baseball as a lefty, you’ll find that they’re both very similar movements. In both tennis and baseball (and golf and all kinds of other throwing/hitting sports and activities), all the power comes from the legs and the torque of the hips while the arms are relatively relaxed. Trying to muscle through a swing or throw with the arms results in much less power. In all these movements, you’re effectively “throwing” your own arm attached to the racket/bat/ball using your legs and hips for torque.
As a righty in tennis doing a one-hand backhand, you can generate tremendous torque since you finish the turn towards your racket side on your right arm. It’s the same as a righty hitting as a lefty in baseball. You turn your hips as you swing and finish on your right arm side with the follow through. Whereas as a righty batting right, it’s more difficult to generate as much torque because it’s much less natural/comfortable to rotate and finish with the bat in your non-dominant, weaker left hand.
Lots of right handed softball players are taught how to “slap” from the left side.
I would guess that a majority of natural left handers develop some sort of right handed dominant skill, as it’s a right handed world. Mine is batting and golfing from the right handed. I can hit from the left side but not as well.
My fiance throws and bats lefthanded, but writes with her right hand.
OT — Lasers sighted over Florida, compared to Maui: we’ll see if anything happens.
I’m a lefty.
Writing: left hand.
Golf: lefty
Baseball: lefty but taught myself to hit from the right side. Not particularly challenging.
Hockey: righty. Seems more natural to play this way.
Guitar: righty. Fingering the frets seems the harder task so better to do this with your dominant hand.Replies: @Corpse Tooth, @Anonymous, @Mike Tre, @pirelli, @AnotherDad, @Pop Warner
Here’s an interesting list of musicians who play left handed including drummers who are left handed but play right.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_musicians_who_play_left-handed
Thanks.
OT — How many shenanigans will Democrats attempt to simply repeat, without a plague to justify them, this election?
I’m right handed, but batted left. Would have played golf that way, but the old man switched me back to right as there was a dearth of left handed clubs back in the day.
In ice hockey there are five “skater” positions – Left Wing, Center, Right Wing, and two Defencemen (one of whom plays primarily on the left side of the rink while facing the opponent’s goal).
There is an advantage to playing left hand lower on the stick nearer the blade (with a curved stick blade which is “open” to the center of the ice) for at least 40% of “skater” positions (Left Wingers and Defencemen on the Left side) and half if you exclude the Center as a position in for which the curve of the blade is neutral (because more regularly he receives and gives passes both ways). The “open” curve of the stick to the center and other side of the ice surface is an advantage in receiving and giving passes as well as picking the puck up from the boards while moving. The “open” curve of the stick towards center ice is also an advantage in shooting on the opponent’s net with full force via a wrist shot, snap shot or slap shot (a left handed shooter skating down the right side would typically pivot with his skates more or less perpendicular to the length of the ice in order to deliver a shot and vice versa for right handed shooters on the left side).
The Canadians’ penchant for teaching kids play with the dominant hand high from mites may have gained more steam when curved stick blades began to become the norm, thereby creating an advantage in making teams for left shooting skaters needed to play the left sides of the rink.
Remember in my hockey watching days in the 70's the Soviets often had wingers with off hand shots. There were true differences in the Soviet game compared to the Canadian game back then. Soviets also took many fewer shots a game than Canadians since they would concentrate on more passing to take only better percentage shots. I saw the Soviet team embarrass the Rangers with their passing. Shortly after the Soviets played the Flyers and the Soviets left the ice due to the Flyers' rough play.Replies: @Ganderson, @Ian M.
This is the basis for the so-called "Left-wing Lock" offensive zone trap system the Czechs used to defeat that other "Big Red Machine" . The fore-checking left wing engages in a puck battle with the breakout left wing. The preponderance of natural right handers holding the stick left leads to natural board advantage to the natural side defensive left-winger battles an off side right winger.
At the NHL level, off side wings are less common in the 21st century because the game speed leaves them awkward and vulnerable on the boards during a breakout.
I grew up in a part of the U.S. that didn't have a strong hockey culture. I held the stick opposite the way most Canadian kids are taught, as did everyone I played with. All of us had played baseball, golfed, etc. so it seemed correct that way. And of course if dad didn't play growing up and goes to buy his right-handed son a hockey stick, he'll get one that's "right-handed". The terminology is confusing if you didn't grow up around the sport. I knew something was up when I noticed the majority of NHL players shot left-handed - either there were a lot of natural righties shooting left, or being left-handed was some kind of major advantage in becoming a pro hockey player. Turns out its the former. However, the ratio in the NHL is usually closer to 60-40 than the broad population natural righty-lefty ratio that's something like 85-15 or 90-10, so a fair number of players shoot from the same side as their natural handedness.
I've always wondered if states like Minnesota where hockey has a stronger foothold turn out more players shooting like the rest of the hockey world (natural righties shooting left, and vice-versa). It seems like more kids in my area are doing it that way now. Presumably it's the homogenizing effect of the internet.
Canadians are far from universal in teaching kids to go dominant hand high. There are many prominent exceptions, such as Mario Lemieux and Nathan MacKinnon. Alexander Ovechkin is an interesting case because he writes with his right hand and shoots off his right side, but throws and hits a baseball left-handed. Right-handed shots are overrepresented in NHL scoring records, though I think that's likely just statistical noise.
There are split-eye or cross-handed (I forget what it’s called) people, too. For instance, I’m right-handed but I shoot a rifle left-handed.
I’m a righty who played ice hockey left-handed (from age five through college) but I’m from the noncontiguous Canadian province of Alabama.
Speaking of which, I hardly ever see people with missing hands or arms, either with empty sleeves or hooks. People with missing legs are far more common.
I always wondered if she was blown up in some military activity.
I'm pretty sure I was born naturally right-handed, because by the time I was in kindergarden I already played neighborhood baseball using a right-hander's glove, and I was learning to write with my right hand.
Then, a very bad car accident made me left-handed. A steering link on our Triumph TR-3 somehow broke or became disconnected, and my mother could not steer the car. It was nighttime, and she was driving my sister and me through a fast chicane in a highway in Huntington Beach.
We went off the road and rolled over, landing upside down. The British roadster's convertible top was folded down, so we crashed upside down with no top. Amazingly, all three of us lived. My 13-year-old sister lost her front teeth. My right arm was broken in two places. Mom only suffered some cuts on her forehead, but she was trapped in her lap belt under the car while gasoline leaked out of the tank.
Anyway, my right arm was in a cast for months, and had to be reset and put in a cast again. This was the time when I was learning how to right, how to throw, and how to do a lot of things.
I became left handed. When the cast was off, my father had to buy me a new baseball glove, one for a left-handed thrower, because that's what I had become.
I wrote, threw, hit, played golf even, left-handed ever since.
However, after I finished college, my father noted how bad my hand writing was, and he suggested I try to learn how to write with my original hand. I took his advice, and it only took me about a week or less to learn how to write (including cursive, BTW, for all you disadvantaged youngsters) with my right hand.
But I still swing a bat and a golf club left-handed.
I swing an ax both ways, because I learned to do that in the Forest Service. You see, when you can do that, you can do twice as much work. At least I could.Replies: @Corpse Tooth, @onetwothree, @Dmon, @ScarletNumber
Left-handed Tony Iommi of Black Sabbath cut off his right hand fingertips in a joinery. He had just started learning guitar, and tried flipping it around to play right-handed. He found this awkward, and so improvised prosthetic fingertips on his right hand to fret the guitar. He regarded this as a mistake later on. Well, yeah. It seems obvious to favor the non-disabled limb.
(Curiously, string instruments demand much more dexterity from the weak hand.)
As a kid, the first full-length biography I read was of Mickey Mantle. As all baseball fans know, his father raised him to be a baseball player as early and as intensely as Earl Woods raised his son to be a golfer. The book noted that young Mickey loved batting righty, but was almost brought to tears when his dad started forcing him to take lefty swings at about age three.
After The Mick retired, I heard him say in an interview that the only thing he could do lefty was swing for the fences. That might be an exaggeration. I don’t recall him ever having bunted lefty, but I assume he could. But he swore could do nothing else baseball-related as a left hander. He could not even play pepper lefty; he lacked the necessary fine motor skills from that side.
FWIW.
P.S. Too bad his father couldn’t talk him out of playing high school football. That’s how he suffered his first of many serious leg injuries.
https://www.facebook.com/watch/?v=668256067017247
MWVxczJ3NWw5c201Mw
An irritating aspect of internet comment sections is the seemingly irresistible urge to correct errors, trivial or vital, real or perceived.
In field hockey you have to play right-handed, otherwise you will constantly be fouling or hitting the ball with the back of the stick.
In sports where you wield a bat or stick there are actually two kinds of being left-handed.
Either you are a true lefty, or you are a right-hander who prefers to hit the backhand shot.
This is particularly obvious in tennis where a right-handed player playing a 2-handed backhand would be regarded as a lefty in baseball, golf, or cricket. The difference is that players in these sports always hit the ball on the same side of the body, whereas tennis players have to hit it on both sides.
I saw a young White lady with both of legs and lower arms gone in a wheelchair on a Chicago El train platform.
I always wondered if she was blown up in some military activity.
I'm pretty sure I was born naturally right-handed, because by the time I was in kindergarden I already played neighborhood baseball using a right-hander's glove, and I was learning to write with my right hand.
Then, a very bad car accident made me left-handed. A steering link on our Triumph TR-3 somehow broke or became disconnected, and my mother could not steer the car. It was nighttime, and she was driving my sister and me through a fast chicane in a highway in Huntington Beach.
We went off the road and rolled over, landing upside down. The British roadster's convertible top was folded down, so we crashed upside down with no top. Amazingly, all three of us lived. My 13-year-old sister lost her front teeth. My right arm was broken in two places. Mom only suffered some cuts on her forehead, but she was trapped in her lap belt under the car while gasoline leaked out of the tank.
Anyway, my right arm was in a cast for months, and had to be reset and put in a cast again. This was the time when I was learning how to right, how to throw, and how to do a lot of things.
I became left handed. When the cast was off, my father had to buy me a new baseball glove, one for a left-handed thrower, because that's what I had become.
I wrote, threw, hit, played golf even, left-handed ever since.
However, after I finished college, my father noted how bad my hand writing was, and he suggested I try to learn how to write with my original hand. I took his advice, and it only took me about a week or less to learn how to write (including cursive, BTW, for all you disadvantaged youngsters) with my right hand.
But I still swing a bat and a golf club left-handed.
I swing an ax both ways, because I learned to do that in the Forest Service. You see, when you can do that, you can do twice as much work. At least I could.Replies: @Corpse Tooth, @onetwothree, @Dmon, @ScarletNumber
Interesting. Tris Speaker, who was generally considered the greatest defensive centerfielder ever for the first half of the 20th century, was a born righthander who learned to bat and throw lefthanded after breaking his arm in a horseback riding accident in childhood. Closer to the present day, Billy Wagner, an outstanding relief pitcher (with a high-90’s fastball) became a lefty after breaking his (naturally dominant) right arm as a boy. Bill James, in his Historical Baseball Abstract mentioned a couple of other guys (I don’t recall who at the moment) who were regarded as outstanding glove men and who also threw with their non-dominant arm after childhood accidents. He remarked that a number of the great glove men were essentially ambidextrous.
Meanwhile, besides what MSN describes as “unprecedented violence”–and in Haiti, that’s saying something–the Haitians are EATING people again.
Left hands apparently are not a culinary issue, in Haiti.
If MSN is reporting THAT, it must be a shitshow hell on earth over there about now.
I can’t wait for the undocumented “refugees” Biden flies in from that party. Anyone think they’re bound to have some nervous ticks? Maybe we can put them in the military to fast-track their citizenship status. They already have a unique survival skill that’s difficult to teach.
File Under: Some Cultures are Better Than Others:
https://www.msn.com/en-us/news/world/haiti-violence-soars-sees-police-attacked-with-machetes-as-gangs-wreak-havoc/ar-BB1jnczB
I write with my left hand, but shoot shotguns and rifles from the right shoulder, handguns from the right hand – my right eye is my master eye.
they all play guitar right handed and box right handed, same as everybody else. best ways to measure are your throwing hand, writing hand, guitar picking hand. single hand dexterity and strength.
a dual wield tool like a sword, bat, or stick does indeed offer you an option to use it left handed. i don’t think this shows much though. this is really about dual wield tools. even there Canadians probably all shoot long guns right handed. but then you get into right eye versus left eye dominance. the baseball thing might just be about eye dominance. you want cross dominance.
the first time i picked up a hockey stick for street hockey i did indeed wield it left handed, but everything else right handed. whatever seemed most convenient, unless a professional gave instruction to the contrary. somehow, Tua Tagovailoa, who is right handed, was instructed to throw with his left hand since he was young. like Kurt Cobain, he is not naturally left handed, but plays that way. nobody knows why Cobain played left handed.
the interesting questions still remain:
1) why are human nervous systems so right hand biased? my hypothesis is that it’s because throwing was extremely important to survival, a right hand spiral is better than a left hand spiral, and humans are handed as a circuitry efficiency thing. ambidextrous human nervous systems would be less efficient, and calories were rare and expensive for 100,000 years. a classic evolution scenario. cross eye dominance didn’t help with much for most of human history, so it wasn’t selected for.
2) why is every NFL quarterback right handed? that’s a really astonishing thing. 90 out of 90 guys? or whatever the numbers are. i propose that any good left handed athlete who was also good at throwing deliberately went 100% into baseball. the number of left handed baseball pitchers is several SDs too high versus expectation.
3) why are left handed musicians so GREATLY underrepresented at guitar? i used to think they were slightly overrepresented, as they are in other art forms, but actually doing a serious survey, there’s WAY LESS left handed players than you would expect – BELOW population rates. how many left handed players are on some of these Greatest Of All Time lists? they have the opportunity to play a right handed guitar upside down – some of them did that – and more recently there are more left handed guitars available. but right handed players are overwhelmingly dominant. you would expect right hemisphere dominant people to be more common.
That works against QBs. The spin and arc of a lefty QB’s throws are opposite of what a receiver is used to so I think I’d be a disadvantage for a team to have a lefty QB.Replies: @deep anonymous, @Reg Cæsar
also weird is how few left handed drummers there are. i worked in the music industry for years and have seen hundreds of shows. the number of times i’ve seen the drums set up for a left handed player, i can count on one hand. here, there is no excuse about only right handed instruments being available. you can set up the drums any way you want. so maybe you would assume, a left handed player plays on a right hand kit, but plays open, with their left hand on the hi hat – but i’ve never seen this. i’ve seen a few right handed players deliberately play open – master level players only – but i’ve never seen a left handed player playing open on a right handed kit.
rhythm neurology is somewhat separate from the rest of the music neurology (“Drummers are different”) but even here, it’s the same thing. like 99% of drummers are left hemisphere dominant. they hit the hi hat with their right hand, deliberately complicating the motion and making it less efficient, so their less dexterous, less strong left hand can hit the snare. only a few master drummers play open handed for maximum speed and efficiency.
makes me wonder if military grip was some sort of reaction to weak, less dexterous left hands for marching band and snare drum war drumming. LOL at Buddy Rich playing totally awesome for decades with military grip. how. he hated matched grip players too, but nobody plays military grip anymore. Neil Peart was the last guy to try that.
The original purpose of the traditional grip was to play military drums slung on a strap to the left side. Now most marching bands use symmetrical harnesses but they still use the asymmetrical grip, which I am not a fan of: technique should fit the setup!The reason I use it is because it allows me to have a more balanced posture. Specifically, it puts my body in a more symmetrical, balanced position when my right hand is playing the ride off to my right and my left hand is playing the snare between my legs. If I use matched, I find myself having to lean/twist to the right to be able to "hang" my left hand over the snare to get the light touch necessary for acoustic jazz. And that lean throws off the feet and generally screws everything up.
"there is no excuse about only right handed instruments being available. you can set up the drums any way you want. "
In theory yes, not always in practice. I played drums in a metal band back in the early 90's. First, a lot of LHD's don't have access to their own kit when they are first starting out, so they have to make use of a RHD's kit. Most of the RH kit owners aren't really interested in changing their kit around. Also at a lot of gigs where there are several acts, the drummers are all required to make use of the same stage kit, and it is going to be set up RH and they aren't going to let you change it. Ask me how I know.
And a guitar can be restrung to accommodate a lefty in about 10-15 minutes. But no righty is going to accommodate him. Same goes with drummers.
A lot of metal drummers play primarily open handed, because of the speed. Lars Ulrich played with a high hat on each side of his snare for a long time; Danny Carey positions his high hat directly infront of his snare for a semi open handed approach. Dave Lombardo and Stuart Copeland are left handed but both have always played right handed on a right handed kit. Phil Collins is one of the few left handed drummers who plays a left handed kit, or used to.
As far as the traditional grip, it's mostly a stylistic thing anymore. It offers no real technical advantage although Lang and a lot of the current jazz drummers still use it.
Want to see a technical master? Watch Steve Moore, aka the Mad Drummer:
https://youtu.be/ItZyaOlrb7E?si=WIA1duCh6HMni67gReplies: @Reg Cæsar
There is an advantage to playing left hand lower on the stick nearer the blade (with a curved stick blade which is "open" to the center of the ice) for at least 40% of "skater" positions (Left Wingers and Defencemen on the Left side) and half if you exclude the Center as a position in for which the curve of the blade is neutral (because more regularly he receives and gives passes both ways). The "open" curve of the stick to the center and other side of the ice surface is an advantage in receiving and giving passes as well as picking the puck up from the boards while moving. The "open" curve of the stick towards center ice is also an advantage in shooting on the opponent's net with full force via a wrist shot, snap shot or slap shot (a left handed shooter skating down the right side would typically pivot with his skates more or less perpendicular to the length of the ice in order to deliver a shot and vice versa for right handed shooters on the left side).
The Canadians' penchant for teaching kids play with the dominant hand high from mites may have gained more steam when curved stick blades began to become the norm, thereby creating an advantage in making teams for left shooting skaters needed to play the left sides of the rink.Replies: @RAZ, @Dr. DoomNGloom, @Anon
As a right winger it’s easier to take passes if you’re a right hand shot, and it’s easier for a left winger to take passes if you’re a left hand shot. But a right winger with a left hand shot has a better shooting angle towards goal as you’re shooting from closer to the center. Also true for a left winger with a right hand shot.
Remember in my hockey watching days in the 70’s the Soviets often had wingers with off hand shots. There were true differences in the Soviet game compared to the Canadian game back then. Soviets also took many fewer shots a game than Canadians since they would concentrate on more passing to take only better percentage shots. I saw the Soviet team embarrass the Rangers with their passing. Shortly after the Soviets played the Flyers and the Soviets left the ice due to the Flyers’ rough play.
Although right-handed, I’ve always naturally assumed a southpaw stance for (pretend) boxing. I understand that’s an unusual combo.
Given that southpaw boxers will have more experience with facing an opponent leading from the “same” side, shouldn’t that give them an edge over their rivals? Knowing Mr. Sailer’s interest in applying statistical analysis to sporting records perhaps he could research the topic . . ?
Over 10% (33) of them showed sharp or blunt force trauma. A third of the injuries were on the left hand side.
I took two things away after reading this study, don't mess with a southpaw and thank you God that I was born in more peaceful times.
In baseball there are advantages to batting lefty so some batters are taught to bat lefty from a young age to take advantage of that fact. These advantages are exacerbated in softball where first base is only 60 feet away rather than 90.
The true rarity in baseball is batting righty and throwing lefty, so much so that I believe only two Hall of Famers meet this criteria: Rickey Henderson and
Here is a ranking of position-playing TL/BRs from 15 years ago. Henderson appears to be the only Hall-of-Famer on it. Cleon Jones ranks fourth, and second after 1920. Bats right, throws left: The best players in major league historyJones's case may be unique. Right field at his sandlot in Mobile (where he played alongside Tommie Agee) abutted a sensitive neighbor, perhaps a business with glass windows. Everyone was thus required to bat right-handed.Replies: @Dr. DoomNGloom
I'm pretty sure I was born naturally right-handed, because by the time I was in kindergarden I already played neighborhood baseball using a right-hander's glove, and I was learning to write with my right hand.
Then, a very bad car accident made me left-handed. A steering link on our Triumph TR-3 somehow broke or became disconnected, and my mother could not steer the car. It was nighttime, and she was driving my sister and me through a fast chicane in a highway in Huntington Beach.
We went off the road and rolled over, landing upside down. The British roadster's convertible top was folded down, so we crashed upside down with no top. Amazingly, all three of us lived. My 13-year-old sister lost her front teeth. My right arm was broken in two places. Mom only suffered some cuts on her forehead, but she was trapped in her lap belt under the car while gasoline leaked out of the tank.
Anyway, my right arm was in a cast for months, and had to be reset and put in a cast again. This was the time when I was learning how to right, how to throw, and how to do a lot of things.
I became left handed. When the cast was off, my father had to buy me a new baseball glove, one for a left-handed thrower, because that's what I had become.
I wrote, threw, hit, played golf even, left-handed ever since.
However, after I finished college, my father noted how bad my hand writing was, and he suggested I try to learn how to write with my original hand. I took his advice, and it only took me about a week or less to learn how to write (including cursive, BTW, for all you disadvantaged youngsters) with my right hand.
But I still swing a bat and a golf club left-handed.
I swing an ax both ways, because I learned to do that in the Forest Service. You see, when you can do that, you can do twice as much work. At least I could.Replies: @Corpse Tooth, @onetwothree, @Dmon, @ScarletNumber
Not to diminish your story, but Mickey Lolich of the Tigers became a lefty in the complete opposite way; a motorcycle fell and broke his left collarbone when he was 2. The doctor advised that he start throwing lefty in an attempt to rehabilitate that side of his body. He took to it and threw lefty for his entire baseball career, even though he was righty in every other aspect of his life.
I’m a lefty.
Writing: left hand.
Golf: lefty
Baseball: lefty but taught myself to hit from the right side. Not particularly challenging.
Hockey: righty. Seems more natural to play this way.
Guitar: righty. Fingering the frets seems the harder task so better to do this with your dominant hand.Replies: @Corpse Tooth, @Anonymous, @Mike Tre, @pirelli, @AnotherDad, @Pop Warner
It only *seems* like it would be easier to play that way. The work done by the strumming / picking hand requires a lot more control and dexterity than it seems to, even setting aside finger picking.
If you’re strumming or picking with your non-dominant hand, you’re going to have a way harder time keeping rhythm than if you switched it up. You’ll also have a harder time controlling volume and tone. These would more than offset any gains in finger dexterity from using your dominant hand for fretwork. The difference in finger dexterity matters less here than the difference in overall coordination and control of the arm / hand in question.
I’m not sure I’ve ever actually met any player who frets with their dominant hand, though I know it’s “a thing,” mostly among left handers.
Jimi Hendrix could play left- and right-handed guitars either way. This was not a stunt-- he had good reasons for each of the four. He started out righty-on-right, as most lefties do, then flipped it because it was more comfortable that way. He eventually saved up for a lefty, and stuck with that. But, as his father was superstitious, he played it righty when Dad was in the room.
I do. I play all instruments right-handed, but I am more ambidextrous than hard left-handed. I have a moderate left bias, but I can generally do anything right-handed if I practice it that way.
For example, I started out computer mousing left-handed, but moved to almost exclusively right-handed mousing, even at my own computer, because so much of my work had me sitting down at other people's computers (and so many mice are contoured to fit the right hand).
My right hand isn't awkward, so I don't have any trouble keeping up with picking. My first instrument was trumpet and I naturally picked it up right-handed even though the left hand does nothing at all with trumpet.
There are plenty of switch hitters in the big leagues. Have there been switch pitchers? I suppose needing to have a glove on one hand or the other would make that really hard.Replies: @Steve Sailer
Pat Venditte threw 72 innings in the big leagues in 2015-20, throwing left-handed to left-handed batters and right-handed to right-handed batters.
https://www.baseball-reference.com/players/v/vendipa01.shtml
Another guy threw one inning like that in 1995.
The true rarity in baseball is batting righty and throwing lefty, so much so that I believe only two Hall of Famers meet this criteria: Rickey Henderson andSandy Koufax, which is funny because he is generally considered to be the worst-hitting pitcher in the pre-1973 era. He certainly could not have done much worse batting lefty.Replies: @Reg Cæsar
If you’re going to count pitchers, then add Rube Waddell, Andy Cooper, Eppa Rixey, Carl Hubbell, and Randy Johnson. Bill Foster, Herb Pennock, and Rube Marquard were switch-hitters. That’s fully half the left-handed pitchers in the Hall batting right or switch. (Cooper and Foster were Negro Leaguers which is why their names are unfamiliar.)
Here is a ranking of position-playing TL/BRs from 15 years ago. Henderson appears to be the only Hall-of-Famer on it. Cleon Jones ranks fourth, and second after 1920.
Bats right, throws left: The best players in major league history
Jones’s case may be unique. Right field at his sandlot in Mobile (where he played alongside Tommie Agee) abutted a sensitive neighbor, perhaps a business with glass windows. Everyone was thus required to bat right-handed.
OT — Grass Roots.
These people, like left-handers, are born more or les at random into the same families as the NPCs. Being born "real" in this world is like being born into a semi-solipsistic Matrix universe, where most of the people are actually programs. The trick, in some sense, is finding the 5% who are real flesh-and-blood people who are plugged into the Matrix like you (other "Coppertops") and which are just NPC chatbots. It's hard to tells so you need some sort of voight-kampff test to distinguish.
I'm not sure what the distinguishing characteristic would be, but perhaps the ability to really think for yourself and/or engage in genuine creative - rather than just derivative - thought and behaviors.
There are certain tells that you're interacting with an LLM, certain mistakes that they're prone to make, like lack of logic/state-persistence and an inability to do math. They're also highly politically correct and prone to lecture you and/or qualify everything with large amounts of PC verbiage. (They're like 14 year old girls. Perhaps because (1) they've been trained on text produced by 14 year old girls but also (2) because 14 year old girls are themselves well understood as unthinking stochastic parrots of PC orthodoxy. I think both hold.) They can even be "hacked" into revealing the boilerplate to their internal prompt engine - e.g., instructions telling it to always generate diverse images even when explicitly asked to produce images containing only white people. So, approaches like this may also be operable with the NPCs in my story.
(You could also imagine a video game (in a setting like Minecraft or World of Warcraft) where part of your task is to literally figure which characters are operated by other real human players and which are just LLM-operated-NPCs.)
But, come to think of it, looking at the world around us I rather suspect that this "science fiction dystopia" is precisely the world in which we actually live. I wouldn't claim that people who are (regularly derided) as being "proles" or "NPCs" are really just "programs" in our "Matrix" - and devoid of qualia and consciousness - I'd just claim that their level of genuine ability for independent thought is basically exactly as if that were all that they were capable of. Notably, prole/NPC people can be quite smart, or at least seem so, (just as LLMs do) but that doesn't make them not proles/NPCs.
These people were programmed by the television, media, Hollywood and K-12 schooling and show little capability (or inclinatino) for independent thought on (esp.) certain sensitive subjects into which they've been indoctrinated. This is particularly true on matters which are the most important to the media cartelists who bought up and control the public discourse.
Presumably, if these people were born into KJU's North Korea or into a Puritan colony they'd be the "most bigoted adherents of the Party, the swallowers of slogans, the amateur spies and nosers-out of unorthodoxy" in Orwell's parlance.* But, they just happen to be born into the modern West and thus absorb modern orthodoxy instead - things like the goodness of "diversity and multiculturalism" and certain unquestionable narratives around WWII.
It's popular to talk about people being on a left-right political axis, but there's another axis also: the conformist/non-conformist axis. People who are genetically highly conformist would be SS officers if born into Nazi Germany, stalwart communist functionaries if born into the USSR, advocates of slavery if born into the Antebellum South and strident opponents of slavery if born into a Radical Republican family in New England.
If you find yourself basically believing the orthodoxy in your time and place (or holding opinions which are only within its (inevitably?) narrow Overton window) then there are two possibilities (1) you *are* capable of independent thought and your time and place - unlike every other - just happens to be correct about everything or (2) you are just an NPC/conformist (like ~90% of people) who basically believes whatever you're conditioned to believe. Probably in excess of 80% of people fall into the latter category in every time and place.
* https://www.goodreads.com/quotes/258683-winston-had-disliked-her-from-the-very-first-moment-ofReplies: @Steve Sailer
But people also seem to be conformist/nonconformist on different dimensions. E.g., the creatively artistic may not have interesting ideas about public affairs and vice-versa.
There are other factors at play, but I think a large reason women are absent from the high ranks of musical composition is their greater tendency to conform. It's certainly not from a lack of musical talent-- they are all over classical orchestras as performers, where conformity is a feature, not a bug.
It's no coincidence women are also absent from the ranks of really bad composers. Where are their Zappas, their Bowies, their Dylans, their Schoenbergs?
Okay, I'll grant you Carla Bley, and the Shaggs...Replies: @The Germ Theory of Disease, @YetAnotherAnon, @Known Fact
Mickelson’s dad, an airline pilot, hit golf balls in his backyard (into a net, I presume: very few people in San Diego County can afford a full driving rang in their backyards). 18 month old Phil wanted to imitate him, but his dad feared braining his son. So he stuck him in front of him and had him mirror his motions with his tiny golf club.
Then you’ve never met Paul Simon. He’s a natural lefty. So he and Paul McCartney have that in common. Just as McCartney and Paul Stookey have the same middle name.
Jimi Hendrix could play left- and right-handed guitars either way. This was not a stunt– he had good reasons for each of the four. He started out righty-on-right, as most lefties do, then flipped it because it was more comfortable that way. He eventually saved up for a lefty, and stuck with that. But, as his father was superstitious, he played it righty when Dad was in the room.
Oh for pete’s sake, why do we care about the particularities of various sports rituals?
To make fun of this, I once did a performance of “Ubu Roi” where at the opening curtain I told the audience to stand at attention while the National Anthem was played before the show started. Then they had to keep standing while we played “God Bless America”. Then “America the Beautiful.” Then “God Save the Queen.” Then the Sex Pistols version of “God Save the Queen.”
Then we made them keep standing for things like “I’m a Little Teapot, Short and Stout!” and “The Itsy-Bitsy Spider Went Up the Water Spout” and so on.
Eventually they all got exasperated and about a third of them walked out. Then we started. But I bet somewhere in Hell, Jarry got a decent laugh.
Always believed that such things as Lefthanded-ness contains a direct genetic component, that it is inherited (nature). Have known many lefties who had one or both parents, or grandparents, which would indicate a direct connection to heritability, or even containing a DNA component. Perhaps one day a lefty gene will be discovered (if it hasn’t already been discovered).
A large-scale population study of early life factors influencing left-handedness
https://www.nature.com/articles/s41598-018-37423-8A brief piece which includes an interesting perspective.
Hand Dominance: Nature, Nurture, and Relevance for Hand Surgeons
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC8898159/
If your right hand is dominant, your left foot/leg will be dominant.
And vice versa if you are a lefty.
My trainer told me this when I wondered why my left leg seemed stronger on a single reverse leg raise machine than my right leg. I'm a righty.
He said basketball players, boxers, etc. all know this.
I didn't.
I assume it is true but I wonder why that is? Does it have to do with "getaway" takeoff?
Throw a punch at the charging tiger and spin away ASAP? Blocking with that dominant arm?
That’s certainly the way to bet!
There are other factors at play, but I think a large reason women are absent from the high ranks of musical composition is their greater tendency to conform. It’s certainly not from a lack of musical talent– they are all over classical orchestras as performers, where conformity is a feature, not a bug.
It’s no coincidence women are also absent from the ranks of really bad composers. Where are their Zappas, their Bowies, their Dylans, their Schoenbergs?
Okay, I’ll grant you Carla Bley, and the Shaggs…
From the Liverpool docks to the Hollywood Bowl
Yep it's a mighty long way down rock n roll
And your name gets hot, but your heart gets cold
And you look like a star but you're still on the dole...
....All the way from Memphis.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PuMOWrRZ0HA
I can forgive you for a lot of things, bud, but I won't stand for you smearing Bowie. I used to hang out with that guy, and you simply can't say enuf good things about the Thin White Duke. Smart as paint.
As far as classical I do suggest people go to YT and dig up some Louise Ferrenc
Non-standard handedness (sinistrality) is only weakly heritable, about 0.2, about the same as male homosexuality. So it’s mostly environmental and highly susceptible to retraining. Handedness, that is. Genetics ends and environment starts at conception, so embryonic and fetal development is environmental and may have some effect on homosexuality.
LGBT War!
Begun the LGBT War has.
There are other factors at play, but I think a large reason women are absent from the high ranks of musical composition is their greater tendency to conform. It's certainly not from a lack of musical talent-- they are all over classical orchestras as performers, where conformity is a feature, not a bug.
It's no coincidence women are also absent from the ranks of really bad composers. Where are their Zappas, their Bowies, their Dylans, their Schoenbergs?
Okay, I'll grant you Carla Bley, and the Shaggs...Replies: @The Germ Theory of Disease, @YetAnotherAnon, @Known Fact
Well it’s a mighty long way down rock n roll
From the Liverpool docks to the Hollywood Bowl
Yep it’s a mighty long way down rock n roll
And your name gets hot, but your heart gets cold
And you look like a star but you’re still on the dole…
….All the way from Memphis.
I can forgive you for a lot of things, bud, but I won’t stand for you smearing Bowie. I used to hang out with that guy, and you simply can’t say enuf good things about the Thin White Duke. Smart as paint.
Obama, Clinton, George HW Bush, Reagan, Ford, Truman…Replies: @Redneck Farmer, @Ghost of Bull Moose
Because we are The True Master Race.
I would guess that a majority of natural left handers develop some sort of right handed dominant skill, as it's a right handed world. Mine is batting and golfing from the right handed. I can hit from the left side but not as well.
My fiance throws and bats lefthanded, but writes with her right hand.Replies: @Redneck Farmer
Bat and throw (cause a baseball to the face hurts, and I don’t want to rely on my stupid hand to protect me) right, write, catch, and shoot left.
rhythm neurology is somewhat separate from the rest of the music neurology ("Drummers are different") but even here, it's the same thing. like 99% of drummers are left hemisphere dominant. they hit the hi hat with their right hand, deliberately complicating the motion and making it less efficient, so their less dexterous, less strong left hand can hit the snare. only a few master drummers play open handed for maximum speed and efficiency.
makes me wonder if military grip was some sort of reaction to weak, less dexterous left hands for marching band and snare drum war drumming. LOL at Buddy Rich playing totally awesome for decades with military grip. how. he hated matched grip players too, but nobody plays military grip anymore. Neil Peart was the last guy to try that.Replies: @Anonymous, @Mike Tre
I’m a jazz drummer who still uses the traditional grip.
The original purpose of the traditional grip was to play military drums slung on a strap to the left side. Now most marching bands use symmetrical harnesses but they still use the asymmetrical grip, which I am not a fan of: technique should fit the setup!
The reason I use it is because it allows me to have a more balanced posture. Specifically, it puts my body in a more symmetrical, balanced position when my right hand is playing the ride off to my right and my left hand is playing the snare between my legs. If I use matched, I find myself having to lean/twist to the right to be able to “hang” my left hand over the snare to get the light touch necessary for acoustic jazz. And that lean throws off the feet and generally screws everything up.
Back in the day (late 19th century) Tony, “The Count”, Mullane was a switch pitcher of sorts.
I do most things left handed except scissors, throwing frisbees, and pulling weeds. At 10-13, I took golf lessons twice doing it right handed, and it did not go well. Went to a driving range at the beach once as an adult, and to my shock, the balls actually went somewhere. My cursive has always been awful. My righty dad wrote perfect Palmer until a mild stroke at 95.
Being a lefty in sports is an advantage because it throws your opponent off since he is used to facing righties.
That works against QBs. The spin and arc of a lefty QB’s throws are opposite of what a receiver is used to so I think I’d be a disadvantage for a team to have a lefty QB.
Interestingly, he played centerfield, which would have meant a lot of running. QB is more like the pitcher and, of course, center is akin to the catcher. Indeed, those two are supposed to be the most intelligent players in their respective sports.
Nothing personal but if you are left-handed you are a child of Satan.
After The Mick retired, I heard him say in an interview that the only thing he could do lefty was swing for the fences. That might be an exaggeration. I don't recall him ever having bunted lefty, but I assume he could. But he swore could do nothing else baseball-related as a left hander. He could not even play pepper lefty; he lacked the necessary fine motor skills from that side.
FWIW.
P.S. Too bad his father couldn't talk him out of playing high school football. That's how he suffered his first of many serious leg injuries.Replies: @Rohirrimborn, @I, Libertine
As an old New York City guy I can say that your information is not correct. Mickey is possibly the most famous drag bunter in baseball. Drag bunting is done from the leftie batting stance. Here is an interview in which he explains it.
https://www.facebook.com/watch/?v=668256067017247
MWVxczJ3NWw5c201Mw
Two leading scientists of the 18th century had different fates connected to the French Revolution. Antoine Lavoisier was involved with the Farmer-General, whose taxes were unpopular under the monarchy, and his income from it funded many of his experiments. He was executed during the French Revolution. Joseph Priestley, in addition to his scientific experiments, was a non-conformist clergyman and enthusiast for the French Revolution, and a mob (secretly orchestrated by Birmingham magistrates) burned down his Birmingham home in 1791. Priestley was constantly threatened and eventually moved to the USA, dying there in 1804.
But people also seem to be conformist/nonconformist on different dimensions. E.g., the creatively artistic may not have interesting ideas about public affairs and vice-vera
There is an advantage to playing left hand lower on the stick nearer the blade (with a curved stick blade which is "open" to the center of the ice) for at least 40% of "skater" positions (Left Wingers and Defencemen on the Left side) and half if you exclude the Center as a position in for which the curve of the blade is neutral (because more regularly he receives and gives passes both ways). The "open" curve of the stick to the center and other side of the ice surface is an advantage in receiving and giving passes as well as picking the puck up from the boards while moving. The "open" curve of the stick towards center ice is also an advantage in shooting on the opponent's net with full force via a wrist shot, snap shot or slap shot (a left handed shooter skating down the right side would typically pivot with his skates more or less perpendicular to the length of the ice in order to deliver a shot and vice versa for right handed shooters on the left side).
The Canadians' penchant for teaching kids play with the dominant hand high from mites may have gained more steam when curved stick blades began to become the norm, thereby creating an advantage in making teams for left shooting skaters needed to play the left sides of the rink.Replies: @RAZ, @Dr. DoomNGloom, @Anon
There is an advantage in passing, and playing on the boards from the defensive side, but a disadvantage in shooting or playing the boards from the offensive side. Therefore, in Europe, with the wider rinks, less board play, and greater need for favorable shooting angles,, is is far more common to play the skater’s on the so-called “off wing”. The Euros, like the Canadians, tend to place the strong hand high rather than low. While North Americans use the off wing primarily on the Power Play, (think the trigger man on an Overload set-up) it is more the norm for even strength play in Europe.
This is the basis for the so-called “Left-wing Lock” offensive zone trap system the Czechs used to defeat that other “Big Red Machine” . The fore-checking left wing engages in a puck battle with the breakout left wing. The preponderance of natural right handers holding the stick left leads to natural board advantage to the natural side defensive left-winger battles an off side right winger.
At the NHL level, off side wings are less common in the 21st century because the game speed leaves them awkward and vulnerable on the boards during a breakout.
Which makes sense. People only have a limited amount of time and mental capacity at their disposal. It is not unusual for experts/specialists to come across as shallow or myopic when confronted with situations or topics outside their field. Think about how many brilliant virologists showed no understanding for the social ramifications of their proscriptions for managing COVID.
That works against QBs. The spin and arc of a lefty QB’s throws are opposite of what a receiver is used to so I think I’d be a disadvantage for a team to have a lefty QB.Replies: @deep anonymous, @Reg Cæsar
Supposedly the great coach Bill Belichick sought left-handed punters for exactly this reason. He thought it tended to confound/confuse the opponent’s kick returner.
In pro fencing this advantage disappears and I have read the distribution of left/right handers is about fifty fifty.Replies: @anonguy, @Jack D
Here is a ranking of position-playing TL/BRs from 15 years ago. Henderson appears to be the only Hall-of-Famer on it. Cleon Jones ranks fourth, and second after 1920. Bats right, throws left: The best players in major league historyJones's case may be unique. Right field at his sandlot in Mobile (where he played alongside Tommie Agee) abutted a sensitive neighbor, perhaps a business with glass windows. Everyone was thus required to bat right-handed.Replies: @Dr. DoomNGloom
Pitchers should be discouraged from batting with their pitching arm facing the opposing pitcher.
There are other factors at play, but I think a large reason women are absent from the high ranks of musical composition is their greater tendency to conform. It's certainly not from a lack of musical talent-- they are all over classical orchestras as performers, where conformity is a feature, not a bug.
It's no coincidence women are also absent from the ranks of really bad composers. Where are their Zappas, their Bowies, their Dylans, their Schoenbergs?
Okay, I'll grant you Carla Bley, and the Shaggs...Replies: @The Germ Theory of Disease, @YetAnotherAnon, @Known Fact
Yes, that was the great contradiction of Victorian/Edwardian Britain – vast numbers of middle class young ladies played piano, but very few composers or performers resulted.
My 16 yo stepson writes and throws right handed but swings a bat and golf club lefty. I had always assumed he came by that on his own but my wife told me a year ago that the boy’s father, who played first base in high school and was a natural lefty, had insisted his son change sides. He picked up the batting but not the throw. And even at age eight, when they came to live with me, he got great velocity throwing. Enough to hurt my hand trying to catch the ball. But the kid had zero interest in baseball. He also hasn’t learned to ride a bike by age nine, a deficit I corrected while meeting a fair amount of resistance. Go figure. I came from a generation where bike riding and breathing were viewed as innate skills. He tried golf and I got him lefty clubs but he suffers from the common hacker malady of trying to hit the ball rather than sling the club, so he hits a lot of grounders. His father died of alcoholism during COVID, no loss to humanity and his son didn’t even cry.
rhythm neurology is somewhat separate from the rest of the music neurology ("Drummers are different") but even here, it's the same thing. like 99% of drummers are left hemisphere dominant. they hit the hi hat with their right hand, deliberately complicating the motion and making it less efficient, so their less dexterous, less strong left hand can hit the snare. only a few master drummers play open handed for maximum speed and efficiency.
makes me wonder if military grip was some sort of reaction to weak, less dexterous left hands for marching band and snare drum war drumming. LOL at Buddy Rich playing totally awesome for decades with military grip. how. he hated matched grip players too, but nobody plays military grip anymore. Neil Peart was the last guy to try that.Replies: @Anonymous, @Mike Tre
Mike Bordin of Faith No More is left handed and has played his entire career open handed on a right handed kit.
“there is no excuse about only right handed instruments being available. you can set up the drums any way you want. ”
In theory yes, not always in practice. I played drums in a metal band back in the early 90’s. First, a lot of LHD’s don’t have access to their own kit when they are first starting out, so they have to make use of a RHD’s kit. Most of the RH kit owners aren’t really interested in changing their kit around. Also at a lot of gigs where there are several acts, the drummers are all required to make use of the same stage kit, and it is going to be set up RH and they aren’t going to let you change it. Ask me how I know.
And a guitar can be restrung to accommodate a lefty in about 10-15 minutes. But no righty is going to accommodate him. Same goes with drummers.
A lot of metal drummers play primarily open handed, because of the speed. Lars Ulrich played with a high hat on each side of his snare for a long time; Danny Carey positions his high hat directly infront of his snare for a semi open handed approach. Dave Lombardo and Stuart Copeland are left handed but both have always played right handed on a right handed kit. Phil Collins is one of the few left handed drummers who plays a left handed kit, or used to.
As far as the traditional grip, it’s mostly a stylistic thing anymore. It offers no real technical advantage although Lang and a lot of the current jazz drummers still use it.
Want to see a technical master? Watch Steve Moore, aka the Mad Drummer:
https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/8/89/BuddyRich_BuddyRichJustSings.jpgReplies: @Mike Tre
Remember in my hockey watching days in the 70's the Soviets often had wingers with off hand shots. There were true differences in the Soviet game compared to the Canadian game back then. Soviets also took many fewer shots a game than Canadians since they would concentrate on more passing to take only better percentage shots. I saw the Soviet team embarrass the Rangers with their passing. Shortly after the Soviets played the Flyers and the Soviets left the ice due to the Flyers' rough play.Replies: @Ganderson, @Ian M.
Flyers’ coach Fred Shero was a disgrace- mind you, I’m no fan of the cheating’ Ruskies, with their “amateur” players on the Olympics all those years, but Shero’s teams barely played hockey.
In my household there are (were) four hockey players, and three lax players- 3 of us played hockey and lax lefty (I never played lax- no lacrosse in the upper Midwest of my youth). My oldest played righty. All of us play golf righty.
I have a golf/hockey buddy, an Irish-Canadian who spent his formative years in Toronto, who does everything lefty except golf. He explained it was due to the lack of availability of lefty clubs.
Is there a map that shows whether an American is more likely to write hockey or ice hockey?
I’m a lefty.
Writing: left hand.
Golf: lefty
Baseball: lefty but taught myself to hit from the right side. Not particularly challenging.
Hockey: righty. Seems more natural to play this way.
Guitar: righty. Fingering the frets seems the harder task so better to do this with your dominant hand.Replies: @Corpse Tooth, @Anonymous, @Mike Tre, @pirelli, @AnotherDad, @Pop Warner
I played one summer in a co-ed softball league where the guys batted their opposite way. Not hard to do. I had less power. But I wasn’t a power hitter righty either and could still hit just fine.
My one useful thought here: I think it’s goodness for people to practice doing stuff with their off hand and the other way around. I think it’s good to work your brain.
I cannot imagine that the people of Beverly Hills want much from the government, but Adam Schiff is so objectively a disaster, having used government office to indulge a baseless personal obsession and then utterly failing anyway, that I expect plenty will say it’s time to give somebody else a chance.
I grew up playing baseball (I am right-handed), and when I was a preteen/teenager I could switch hit fairly well- it takes some practice, but it was never something that felt completely unnatural as throwing with the left hand does to me. I had a gap of playing baseball of almost 12 years before starting to play the game again in my late 20s, and I couldn’t switch hit any longer- it truly felt unnatural to try.
https://i.postimg.cc/BngHDZpt/1709683922783472.pngReplies: @res
That was from six months ago. Any idea how it played out?
Diabetes takes a lot of legs. Missing arms were more common in rural areas before ag equipment manufacturers got serious about incorporating safety. Corn pickers, augers and pto shafts mangled farm boy limbs on a regular basis from the 1940s thru 1960s.
Some prevailing beliefs about lefties are that they tend to be more eccentric and “artsy”. They are also slightly more likely to be gay than righties. Which is why it always seemed odd that of the Beatles, Paul was the lefty. He was certainly less eccentric than the other Beatles, was more conventional and milquetoast in his musical interests, and was probably the most ragingly heterosexual of the four. Lennon was probably the most eccentric of the four, and was rumored to have experimented with homosexuality. If people didn’t already know and were asked which of the four was a lefty, most would probably guess John.
Obama, Clinton, George HW Bush, Reagan, Ford, Truman…Replies: @Redneck Farmer, @Ghost of Bull Moose
Most people seem to know about the Presidents.
Also homosexuals, twice as many m-to-f trannies, pedophiles.
Children with cerebral palsy, other disorders.
Maybe actors tend lefty because they’re used to adjusting to unfamiliar conditions. And it requires verbal facility.
Lots of exceptional people are left-handed. It’s noticeable in daily life, too. They’re interesting.
Not meaning to overstep, but I suggest leaving open the possibility your stepson may still feel some major resentments about that. Sometimes people in his shoes find a lot of help in Al-Anon (or at his age Alateen), but it’s not something you can force on anyone. It’s actually sad and tragic about his father. Some people manage to recover from alcoholism, but it’s tough to hear about the ones who don’t. Gratifying to hear that you can be a father to him. Good luck and God bless you.
Also homosexuals, twice as many m-to-f trannies, pedophiles.
Children with cerebral palsy, other disorders.
Maybe actors tend lefty because they're used to adjusting to unfamiliar conditions. And it requires verbal facility.
Lots of exceptional people are left-handed. It's noticeable in daily life, too. They're interesting.Replies: @deep anonymous
My father, my oldest sister, and my ex-wife all were left-handed. Each of them also was extremely intelligent.
2019 paper based on the UKBB.
A large-scale population study of early life factors influencing left-handedness
https://www.nature.com/articles/s41598-018-37423-8
A brief piece which includes an interesting perspective.
Hand Dominance: Nature, Nurture, and Relevance for Hand Surgeons
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC8898159/
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_musicians_who_play_left-handedReplies: @Bill Jones
I had no idea that drums were “handed”.
Thanks.
If I’m reading this right you’ve got it backward Steve — I played hockey left-handed and the dominant arm that way is the left arm, held midway on the stick. Especially shooting but basically all phases of the game. The right hand at the top of the stick is relatively powerless. It’s not like hitting a golfball or baseball
My personal quirk is throwing overhand righty (as well as eating and writing) but throwing underhand lefty — including slo-pitch softball, bowling, hockey and kicking lefty in soccer or football
1. Right-handed, right-footed
2. Right-handed, left-footed
3. Left-handed, right-footed
4. Left-handed, left-footedReplies: @Known Fact
My parents, grandparents, and the great-grandparents that I know of were all right handed with near normal vision. My two siblings and I are left handed and extremely near sighted. We discovered in the 90s that our parents are probably 5th cousins, so we blame them. They were going to have a fourth child who might have ended the streak, but the doctor told my mother to stop after me, for the obvious reason–she couldn’t do better. Of course, when my grandparents were young, many lefties were forced into dexterity.
Throwing: Rightie
Getting In Touch With The Unemployed: Leftie
Lefties look cooler in every sport except boxing. Southpaws look awkward as hell.
Coolest leftie batter? Reggie Jackson. Even striking out the guy looked cool.
Coolest leftie quarterback? Tough one but I go with Stabler.Replies: @sf middleroader
No offense to Mr. October, but (a) Ruth was better, and (b) Ken Griffey Jr. had a prettier swing. Oddly (at least to me), Mr. Griffey writes with his right hand but (1) batted left [which is an advantage, on balance], _and_ threw left [which is not an advantage unless you are only athletic enough to play first base, which obviously he was not].
My dad was a lefty who played first base.
His identical twin brother was a righty catcher.
Go figure.
This apparently is the problem with Lamelo Ball, who has the athletic ability to be probably a top 50 player in the NBA but he is right-handed while left eye dominant and therefore kind of reaches across his face to shoot (not particularly well).
As a Giants fan, please add Madison Baumgarner to the list of players who pitched left and batted right. I never understood why he ended up that way, but I think he may have been the best-hitting good pitcher of all time not named Ruth or Ohtani. In fact, on days he wasn’t pitching the Giants would sometimes use him as a pinch hitter when they desperately need their number 8 or 9 spot to do something productive.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wes_Ferrell#Later_life_and_legacy
When his pitching arm was healing from an injury, they planted him at third base for a few weeks, just to keep his bat in the lineup.
Wes isn't in the Hall of Fame, but his big brother is. He had to be one of the first, if not the first, Rick to play in the majors.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rick_Ferrell
"there is no excuse about only right handed instruments being available. you can set up the drums any way you want. "
In theory yes, not always in practice. I played drums in a metal band back in the early 90's. First, a lot of LHD's don't have access to their own kit when they are first starting out, so they have to make use of a RHD's kit. Most of the RH kit owners aren't really interested in changing their kit around. Also at a lot of gigs where there are several acts, the drummers are all required to make use of the same stage kit, and it is going to be set up RH and they aren't going to let you change it. Ask me how I know.
And a guitar can be restrung to accommodate a lefty in about 10-15 minutes. But no righty is going to accommodate him. Same goes with drummers.
A lot of metal drummers play primarily open handed, because of the speed. Lars Ulrich played with a high hat on each side of his snare for a long time; Danny Carey positions his high hat directly infront of his snare for a semi open handed approach. Dave Lombardo and Stuart Copeland are left handed but both have always played right handed on a right handed kit. Phil Collins is one of the few left handed drummers who plays a left handed kit, or used to.
As far as the traditional grip, it's mostly a stylistic thing anymore. It offers no real technical advantage although Lang and a lot of the current jazz drummers still use it.
Want to see a technical master? Watch Steve Moore, aka the Mad Drummer:
https://youtu.be/ItZyaOlrb7E?si=WIA1duCh6HMni67gReplies: @Reg Cæsar
What about Karen Carpenter? Which way did she pound the polyethylene?
Not many drummers sing, and some that do– Ringo Starr, Bev Bevan– have novelty-song voices. As for this, I don’t want to know:
https://youtu.be/sdHyzGXAJPg?si=ed2w9pGDyL3gzfES
The Giants had Madison Bumgarner DH a few times. Other than Ohtani, that’s extremely rare.
That works against QBs. The spin and arc of a lefty QB’s throws are opposite of what a receiver is used to so I think I’d be a disadvantage for a team to have a lefty QB.Replies: @deep anonymous, @Reg Cæsar
John Elway batted left-handed, which gave him considerable time looking over his other shoulder. This had to be to his advantage.
Interestingly, he played centerfield, which would have meant a lot of running. QB is more like the pitcher and, of course, center is akin to the catcher. Indeed, those two are supposed to be the most intelligent players in their respective sports.
Now that performing music is considered a respectable career choice, there are many great female performers…but not composers. My impression from being around music all my life is that composition may well be the art form with the greatest male advantage.
Ruth didn’t bloom as a hitter until he was done pitching. Ohtani takes advantage of a rule which would have been cheating before 1973. So a case is made that “the best-hitting good pitcher of all time” is Wes Ferrell:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wes_Ferrell#Later_life_and_legacy
When his pitching arm was healing from an injury, they planted him at third base for a few weeks, just to keep his bat in the lineup.
Wes isn’t in the Hall of Fame, but his big brother is. He had to be one of the first, if not the first, Rick to play in the majors.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rick_Ferrell
Re: kicking. I played on a soccer team that had four types of players.
1. Right-handed, right-footed
2. Right-handed, left-footed
3. Left-handed, right-footed
4. Left-handed, left-footed
Do you mind explaining what you mean by “sling” the club?
First time in college, boxing a southpaw…it absolutely sucked. I had no idea where his punches were coming from. (Conversely, he knew righties.) Told the coach I couldn’t hit him, couldn’t get away from his jab. The advice was to circle away from it. Which sucked…bunch of extra work and my legs were already fried! He felt no need to circle!
In surfing and skateboard, there is whole “regular foot” and “goofy foot” thing. It’s basically your boxing stance (left foot forward, if righthanded….being regular foot). It’s not anything like trying to write with the wrong hand. Or box wrong way. Just the normal advice to people starting out.
In gymnastics, there’s issues of which side you do your roundoff on. Most beginners will learn cartwheels both ways, but do a standard direction for roundoffs. I think it is left lunge leading (like boxing stance, but in a surge). There is some debate on if all kids should be taught the same direction or handedness taken into account. Also, when you move to twisting flips, it’s important to have a standard direction as things can get confusing.
There are other factors at play, but I think a large reason women are absent from the high ranks of musical composition is their greater tendency to conform. It's certainly not from a lack of musical talent-- they are all over classical orchestras as performers, where conformity is a feature, not a bug.
It's no coincidence women are also absent from the ranks of really bad composers. Where are their Zappas, their Bowies, their Dylans, their Schoenbergs?
Okay, I'll grant you Carla Bley, and the Shaggs...Replies: @The Germ Theory of Disease, @YetAnotherAnon, @Known Fact
As well as the classical world it has always struck me how very few women composers do the themes and scores for movies and TV shows. I was impressed that the great old Avengers series was wonderfully scored by Laurie Johnson — but turns out Laurie was a man.
As far as classical I do suggest people go to YT and dig up some Louise Ferrenc
https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/8/89/BuddyRich_BuddyRichJustSings.jpgReplies: @Mike Tre
KC played right handed with a traditional grip, and she was pretty darn good:
My preference for throwing overhand righty but underhand lefty caused a problem in one softball league where all nine players had to pitch an inning. I developed a little move where I’d slip the glove back on my left hand as I followed through with my lefthanded pitch. Years later I watched Jim Abbott — the fine pitcher with one vestigial arm and hand — do something similar with his glove
1. Right-handed, right-footed
2. Right-handed, left-footed
3. Left-handed, right-footed
4. Left-handed, left-footedReplies: @Known Fact
Maybe good soccer players can choose their foot situationally. I was pretty good but if I try to kick a ball (or beer can) right-footed I would probably fall flat on my back
Trying to research it and not finding much. But I assume that Musk couldn’t get all the saboteurs, and preduct things will get wierd as the Democrat approach the deadline without any ideas.
Here’s an odd “fact” about handedness.
If your right hand is dominant, your left foot/leg will be dominant.
And vice versa if you are a lefty.
My trainer told me this when I wondered why my left leg seemed stronger on a single reverse leg raise machine than my right leg. I’m a righty.
He said basketball players, boxers, etc. all know this.
I didn’t.
I assume it is true but I wonder why that is? Does it have to do with “getaway” takeoff?
Throw a punch at the charging tiger and spin away ASAP? Blocking with that dominant arm?
There was a study on 304 skulls, dating from the 6th and 8th century in southwestern Germany .
Over 10% (33) of them showed sharp or blunt force trauma. A third of the injuries were on the left hand side.
I took two things away after reading this study, don’t mess with a southpaw and thank you God that I was born in more peaceful times.
I’m a lefty.
Writing: left hand.
Golf: lefty
Baseball: lefty but taught myself to hit from the right side. Not particularly challenging.
Hockey: righty. Seems more natural to play this way.
Guitar: righty. Fingering the frets seems the harder task so better to do this with your dominant hand.Replies: @Corpse Tooth, @Anonymous, @Mike Tre, @pirelli, @AnotherDad, @Pop Warner
My dad is a lefty but plays golf righty. His handicap was around 8 at his best, so it seemed to work well for him. However, he eventually got a set of lefty clubs to try it out. He’s probably better than me even with lefty clubs, but I’m a terrible golfer with an even worse golf temperament.
Another thing of note is that my parents are both left handed, but myself and my siblings are all right handed. How often is that?
Remember in my hockey watching days in the 70's the Soviets often had wingers with off hand shots. There were true differences in the Soviet game compared to the Canadian game back then. Soviets also took many fewer shots a game than Canadians since they would concentrate on more passing to take only better percentage shots. I saw the Soviet team embarrass the Rangers with their passing. Shortly after the Soviets played the Flyers and the Soviets left the ice due to the Flyers' rough play.Replies: @Ganderson, @Ian M.
Also playing ‘off-wing’ is pretty much required for a successful one-timer, which seems to be a big part of the game these days.
One-timers as we tend to think of them (slapshots with a full windup) are actually decreasing. The Athletic had an interesting article on it. However, I get the sense that quicker ones with only a waist-high windup, almost like are increasingly common. I haven’t seen any numbers on it, but it would fit with the general trend of the game getting faster. Seems like whenever I see clips of Edmonton’s power play, Draisaitl is scoring with quick one-timers like that. Mikko Rantanen does it often, too. Still has to be done from your off-wing side like you said of course.
Yeah, I don't follow the game closely enough any more really to know for certain, but my impression of seeing power plays is that a lot of goals are scored on some variant of one-timer, but yeah, maybe more with the waist-high type like you suggest.
There is an advantage to playing left hand lower on the stick nearer the blade (with a curved stick blade which is "open" to the center of the ice) for at least 40% of "skater" positions (Left Wingers and Defencemen on the Left side) and half if you exclude the Center as a position in for which the curve of the blade is neutral (because more regularly he receives and gives passes both ways). The "open" curve of the stick to the center and other side of the ice surface is an advantage in receiving and giving passes as well as picking the puck up from the boards while moving. The "open" curve of the stick towards center ice is also an advantage in shooting on the opponent's net with full force via a wrist shot, snap shot or slap shot (a left handed shooter skating down the right side would typically pivot with his skates more or less perpendicular to the length of the ice in order to deliver a shot and vice versa for right handed shooters on the left side).
The Canadians' penchant for teaching kids play with the dominant hand high from mites may have gained more steam when curved stick blades began to become the norm, thereby creating an advantage in making teams for left shooting skaters needed to play the left sides of the rink.Replies: @RAZ, @Dr. DoomNGloom, @Anon
I think it’s more to do with hockey being the first sport for many Canadians. If you set a stick on the ground and have a toddler pick it up they will typically pick it up with their dominant hand at the top of the stick because it’s easier for them to hold it one-handed that way. And contra Known Fact, stickhandling is done almost entirely with the top hand, so it’s a little easier for kids to develop basic skills with their dominant hand on top.
I grew up in a part of the U.S. that didn’t have a strong hockey culture. I held the stick opposite the way most Canadian kids are taught, as did everyone I played with. All of us had played baseball, golfed, etc. so it seemed correct that way. And of course if dad didn’t play growing up and goes to buy his right-handed son a hockey stick, he’ll get one that’s “right-handed”. The terminology is confusing if you didn’t grow up around the sport. I knew something was up when I noticed the majority of NHL players shot left-handed – either there were a lot of natural righties shooting left, or being left-handed was some kind of major advantage in becoming a pro hockey player. Turns out its the former. However, the ratio in the NHL is usually closer to 60-40 than the broad population natural righty-lefty ratio that’s something like 85-15 or 90-10, so a fair number of players shoot from the same side as their natural handedness.
I’ve always wondered if states like Minnesota where hockey has a stronger foothold turn out more players shooting like the rest of the hockey world (natural righties shooting left, and vice-versa). It seems like more kids in my area are doing it that way now. Presumably it’s the homogenizing effect of the internet.
Canadians are far from universal in teaching kids to go dominant hand high. There are many prominent exceptions, such as Mario Lemieux and Nathan MacKinnon. Alexander Ovechkin is an interesting case because he writes with his right hand and shoots off his right side, but throws and hits a baseball left-handed. Right-handed shots are overrepresented in NHL scoring records, though I think that’s likely just statistical noise.
I’m not sure I’ve ever actually met any player who frets with their dominant hand, though I know it’s “a thing,” mostly among left handers.
I do. I play all instruments right-handed, but I am more ambidextrous than hard left-handed. I have a moderate left bias, but I can generally do anything right-handed if I practice it that way.
For example, I started out computer mousing left-handed, but moved to almost exclusively right-handed mousing, even at my own computer, because so much of my work had me sitting down at other people’s computers (and so many mice are contoured to fit the right hand).
My right hand isn’t awkward, so I don’t have any trouble keeping up with picking. My first instrument was trumpet and I naturally picked it up right-handed even though the left hand does nothing at all with trumpet.
Thanks. Interesting article.
Yeah, I don’t follow the game closely enough any more really to know for certain, but my impression of seeing power plays is that a lot of goals are scored on some variant of one-timer, but yeah, maybe more with the waist-high type like you suggest.
After The Mick retired, I heard him say in an interview that the only thing he could do lefty was swing for the fences. That might be an exaggeration. I don't recall him ever having bunted lefty, but I assume he could. But he swore could do nothing else baseball-related as a left hander. He could not even play pepper lefty; he lacked the necessary fine motor skills from that side.
FWIW.
P.S. Too bad his father couldn't talk him out of playing high school football. That's how he suffered his first of many serious leg injuries.Replies: @Rohirrimborn, @I, Libertine
So, I was right when I said I assumed he could. So, when was I incorrect. ? When I said I couldn’t recall him bunting lefty? How could you possibly know I was wrong about that?
An irritating aspect of internet comment sections is the seemingly irresistible urge to correct errors, trivial or vital, real or perceived.
As a strong leftie, the only thing I do right handed is play guitar and I agree with this. I developed an adequate right hand for creditable flatpicking but not a contender for Winfield. But my left hand has been a chord monster, comping in jazz bands and my solos tended towards chord melodies more than single line stuff.
I started in guitar right handed because it was the standard instrument. I don’t regret it as I capitalized on my strengths on the instrument as one should on any instrument and had long decades of playing out in several genres.
Gave it up recently and play trumpet now, which was my childhood instrument. Play that right handed too, so one other right handed thing I do. But for the most part fingers are not a limiting factor on trumpet in my experience and chatter amongst trumpet players about finger frustration is essentially non existent
I have no regrets, I was an accomplished guitarist, every one of them works around physical issues, handedness is just one of them
That being said, these days I would advise a beginning strongly left handed guitarist to consider playing left handed as the availability of left handed guitars is much less of an issue these days
But overall, probably not a huge deal. You will just be better and worse at different things than if you played right handed (possibly).
FWIW my strongly left handed father was a scratch golfer who played righty because that is all the clubs available to him as a kid. Easily could have gone pro but nit what he wanted to do in life.
Now one thing left handers actually should put some thought into but you never hear about is whether they should marry another left handed individual
With both parents left handed, there is a 25% chance a child will be also left handed. So not too uncommon depending on number of siblings
Took a fencing class in college. Me and the other left handed guy ruled the place. The only people we lost to were each other and those were the klutziest bouts to watch since neither of us had any more experience against a left hander than did a right hander.
It was great entertainment for the class whenever we were in a bout, these two guys who routinely destroyed everyone else in the class fumbling around with each other.
In pro fencing this advantage disappears and I have read the distribution of left/right handers is about fifty fifty.
Stuff like tennis it is in certain situations but in fencing it was across the board from very first bout. You just put the other guy to sleep perfunctorily. So even if you happen to average 50 percent against left handers you are still going to be batting .950 whereas right handers will lose every bout against left handers and average .500 against righties giving them .450 overall
Assuming ten percent incidence of lefties
So the initial experience of lefties in fencing is overwhelmingly positive. Sure you know it is because you are left handed but winning is great however it happens.
There is zero $ to be made in that sport by the athletes, especially in the US. Fencing is a lousy spectator sport because the action is so fast and the touches are so light that even the judges who are right there can't see the points being scored - scoring has been electronic for decades. If there was some way of slowing it down (maybe replays in slow motion with commentary) or making the touches more visible it could work because there's actually a lot going on - there's a lot of strategy involved. But as it is, the action is very hard to follow most of the time*.
* except when it isn't. Once my daughter was in a match and it was match point and the other girl tried a do or die hail mary move that she must have been taught by her coach (most of the coaches are E. European). Basically she came out and dived head first at my daughter with her weapon thrust out. But my daughter saw it coming and she side stepped her so the girl went flying right past my daughter and landed face first on ground and lost the match. I don't think the girl was physically hurt but she was humiliated and wept accordingly. But that kind of drama is fairly rare. Usually it's just a bunch of super quick moves and then someone's light comes on and if it wasn't for the light you would have no idea as to who scored against whom.Replies: @Jim Don Bob
In pro fencing this advantage disappears and I have read the distribution of left/right handers is about fifty fifty.Replies: @anonguy, @Jack D
Upon reflection, like to add that beginning fencing was the realm where being left handed was most advantageous
Stuff like tennis it is in certain situations but in fencing it was across the board from very first bout. You just put the other guy to sleep perfunctorily. So even if you happen to average 50 percent against left handers you are still going to be batting .950 whereas right handers will lose every bout against left handers and average .500 against righties giving them .450 overall
Assuming ten percent incidence of lefties
So the initial experience of lefties in fencing is overwhelmingly positive. Sure you know it is because you are left handed but winning is great however it happens.
In pro fencing this advantage disappears and I have read the distribution of left/right handers is about fifty fifty.Replies: @anonguy, @Jack D
There is no such thing. There is of course amateur fencing at the Olympic level and you are right that there is no advantage there but fencing is the most purely amateur sport that I can think of.
There is zero $ to be made in that sport by the athletes, especially in the US. Fencing is a lousy spectator sport because the action is so fast and the touches are so light that even the judges who are right there can’t see the points being scored – scoring has been electronic for decades. If there was some way of slowing it down (maybe replays in slow motion with commentary) or making the touches more visible it could work because there’s actually a lot going on – there’s a lot of strategy involved. But as it is, the action is very hard to follow most of the time*.
* except when it isn’t. Once my daughter was in a match and it was match point and the other girl tried a do or die hail mary move that she must have been taught by her coach (most of the coaches are E. European). Basically she came out and dived head first at my daughter with her weapon thrust out. But my daughter saw it coming and she side stepped her so the girl went flying right past my daughter and landed face first on ground and lost the match. I don’t think the girl was physically hurt but she was humiliated and wept accordingly. But that kind of drama is fairly rare. Usually it’s just a bunch of super quick moves and then someone’s light comes on and if it wasn’t for the light you would have no idea as to who scored against whom.
Another semester I took bowling. Rolled a 183 one day.
There is zero $ to be made in that sport by the athletes, especially in the US. Fencing is a lousy spectator sport because the action is so fast and the touches are so light that even the judges who are right there can't see the points being scored - scoring has been electronic for decades. If there was some way of slowing it down (maybe replays in slow motion with commentary) or making the touches more visible it could work because there's actually a lot going on - there's a lot of strategy involved. But as it is, the action is very hard to follow most of the time*.
* except when it isn't. Once my daughter was in a match and it was match point and the other girl tried a do or die hail mary move that she must have been taught by her coach (most of the coaches are E. European). Basically she came out and dived head first at my daughter with her weapon thrust out. But my daughter saw it coming and she side stepped her so the girl went flying right past my daughter and landed face first on ground and lost the match. I don't think the girl was physically hurt but she was humiliated and wept accordingly. But that kind of drama is fairly rare. Usually it's just a bunch of super quick moves and then someone's light comes on and if it wasn't for the light you would have no idea as to who scored against whom.Replies: @Jim Don Bob
The college I went to had a two year gym requirement. One semester I took fencing. I was not good at it, but it was cool.
Another semester I took bowling. Rolled a 183 one day.
I’m left handed but play golf right handed — left handed clubs were a lot harder to come by in the early ’90s when my parents started me playing. I can throw a tight spiral right handed and do just about everything but write both handed, although my penmanship is so atrocious you probably couldn’t tell the difference.
But at a gun class a couple years back, they made everyone determine their dominant eye. I don’t remember exactly how they did it, but they had you look through some kind of sight with the other eye closed. When I did it with my left eye, I could see the target fine. But with my right eye, I couldn’t see it at all. Gun guys probably know what I’m referring to.
That ain’t socially constructed.
Overall, eye dominance is more complicated than I realized. This paper has some useful discussion.
Sensory Eye Dominance: Relationship Between Eye and Brain
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC6980844/
Some excerpts.
But at a gun class a couple years back, they made everyone determine their dominant eye. I don't remember exactly how they did it, but they had you look through some kind of sight with the other eye closed. When I did it with my left eye, I could see the target fine. But with my right eye, I couldn't see it at all. Gun guys probably know what I'm referring to.
That ain't socially constructed.Replies: @res
Eye dominance can probably be modified by extreme environment (e.g. an injury while young which requires an eye patch on the dominant eye for an extended period). Does anyone know more about this?
Overall, eye dominance is more complicated than I realized. This paper has some useful discussion.
Sensory Eye Dominance: Relationship Between Eye and Brain
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC6980844/
Some excerpts.