When being left-handed is more than all right

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One reason why Phil Mickelson may not win this weekend’s British Open is because he’s left-handed, writes Examiner columnist Frank Deford. Mickelson is one of just three lefties to have ever won a major tournament. - AP

BALTIMORE (Map, News) - If you’re interested in having your son support you in your old age, here is my vocational advice to you: starting when he’s in the crib, turn him into a left-hander, and then train him to become a relief pitcher. There’s always a well-paying place for southpaw relievers, well up into their athletic dotage.

You see, while lefties moan that the world at large discriminates against them — even though in modern times we usually find ourselves ruled by them like when southpaw Presidents Truman, Ford, Reagan, Bush and the elder  Clinton were in office — our sinister brethren have all the advantages in sports whenever they directly face right-handers. Now an engineering professor named David Peters has come up with some basic statistics, which show what we righties always knew anyway, that baseball in particular is a gauche paradise. And that ain’t no left-handed compliment.

Whereas only about 10 percent of the whole human population is lefty, Professor Peters revealed that about 25 percent of major leaguers are the minority-handed sort of people. More significant, in the Hall of Fame, of the seventy pitchers, fifteen were southpaw — more than twice the Homo sapiens average. And hitters: of the 138 in Cooperstown, 59 were lefty, and eight more half-lefty switch hitters. That means that an incredible 46 percent of the best hitters ever swung at those appetizing right-handed slants.

In basketball, left-handed shooters have always driven opponents crazy. The game’s greatest defensive player, Bill Russell, was a southpaw, which meant that his strong arm matched perfectly for blocking right-handers’ shots. In tennis, the ball spins differently off a left-hander’s racket. Hello, Rafael Nadal. Roger Federer’s shots that go to a fellow right-hander’s weakness, bounce right into Nadal’s wheelhouse. Just as a statistically unusual number of baseball’s greatest hitters — Cobb, Ruth, Williams, Gwynn, Bonds — were left-handed, so does Nadal come from distinguished lefty lineage — Laver, McEnroe, Connors, Navratilova.

Somebody once wrote that McEnroe would be just another losing quarterfinalist if he were right-handed. McEnroe went berserk. Of course, if there’d been a fight, he surely would have battered the writer. Left-handed boxers are a scourge other fighters try to avoid. In fact, there’s a theory postulated by two French sociologists at the University of Montpellier that lefties succeed so in sport because back when men faced off in man-to-man combat, lefties prevailed more often, living to pass those victorious genes on.

The best proof that lefties have an advantage in man-to-man competition, comes, conversely, from golf, where you’re not playing your opponent, only that neutral little ball. In the whole history of the PGA, left-handers have won just three major tournaments, the last being Phil Mickelson’s Masters title in 2004. Mickelson might have won even more if he didn’t make so many ditzy decisions. But then, of course, as us in the smug right-handed majority are so sure of in defeat, left-handers might have the advantage in sport, but God evened that out by making them goofier.

Frank Deford can be reached at flamegarden@aol.com.

SEE THE LATEST ON THIS STORY

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58 days ago: Before Phelps, ‘Sunny Boy’ shined brighter than anyone in the pool

65 days ago: Take me out to the ballgame, no matter the price

79 days ago: Presidential game plan: Obama’s bid rooted to the rise of the black athlete

» 86 days ago: When being left-handed is more than all right «

93 days ago: Hall of Famer who brings the past to present

100 days ago: Hope springs eternal for Baltimore’s Phelps

107 days ago: The playground: Darwinism at its best

114 days ago: Cubs and 1908: Can’t say one without the other

121 days ago: Be fore-warned: Golf courses will be saturated in water crisis

128 days ago: Turning back NBA clock produces timeless classic