Why Do Left-Handers Excel at Certain Elite Sports But Not Others? (theguardian.com) 131
Nicola Davis, writing for The Guardian: From cricketer Wasim Akram to baseball pitcher Clayton Kershaw and table tennis star Ding Ning, the world of sport has no shortage of left-handed players. But now researchers say they've worked out why lefties are overrepresented in some elite sports but not others. The study, published in the journal Biology Letters, suggests that being left-handed is a particular advantage in interactive sports where time pressures are particularly severe, such as table tennis and cricket -- possibly because their moves are less familiar to their mostly right-handed opponents, who do not have time to adjust. "The data suggests that the heavier the time constraints are operating in a sport, the larger the proportion of left-handers," said the study's author, Dr Florian Loffing of the University of Oldenburg in Germany. "We are less used to playing lefties, and [so] might end up in not developing the optimal strategies to compete with them." While it is thought that about 10-13 percent of the population is left-handed, it has long been noted that in certain interactive sports there is often a surprisingly high proportion of left-handers playing at elite levels.
Any baseball player or fan could tell you that (Score:5, Insightful)
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The same with left arm fast bowlers, like Wasim Akram in cricket. That man could bowl!.
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Being a lefty probably helped, but also being able to bowl a yorker that swung either way at 160 km per hour was a factor too I think.
He seemed to be a good sport too, signing autographs for kids over the fence between his overs.
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As a kid I had a poster of him from a Pakistan vs England match in England. I think the stats for the bowling spell of his were 5 wickets for 8 runs off of 22 balls. Absolute legend. If you escaped him you then had to face Waqar Younis from the other end.
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The same with left arm fast bowlers, like Wasim Akram in cricket. That man could bowl!.
I don't get it - how do the pins and lanes react differently to left-handed bowlers? As a former scratch 10-pin bowler myself, I know the lack of lefties means the oil patterns on the left side of the lanes change less throughout a session, but everything else should be symmetrical.
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A bowler in cricket, not bowling.
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Sorry, this is cricket,real sport, not some fatass wobbling across a wooden floor.
Re:Any baseball player or fan could tell you that (Score:4, Informative)
The same with left handed fencers. The angles of attack and distance is different. Those right handed fencers that do not practice against left handed fencers are often caught unaware.
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There's also something about the reletive position of the batter. That's why switch hitters generally bat left when a lefty is on the mound.
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> That's why switch hitters generally bat left when a lefty is on the mound.
It's the other way round. A right-handed pitcher's curve/breaking ball will break away from a right handed batter, and towards a left handed batter. And vice-versa.
It's much easier to see and hit a ball curving towards you than away from you. A switch hitter will always line up on the opposite side of a pitcher's hand -- i.e. the batter will bat lefty against a right-hander, and righty against a left-hander.
Also worth noting: bat
Re: Any baseball player or fan could tell you that (Score:2)
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There's also something about the reletive position of the batter. That's why switch hitters generally bat left when a lefty is on the mound.
Not just the relative position--the absolute position gives an advantage too. A left-handed batter starts out one step closer to first base. Grounders turn into actual races.
Re:Any baseball player or fan could tell you that (Score:5, Insightful)
I disagree. I mean the theory is sound, but it somewhat falls apart because even though only 10% of people are left handed, because they do so well and are so desirable in these positions / sports they are heavily over represented in them, and the overrepresentation is going to dilute the effectiveness.
I mean around 30%+ of baseball pitchers are left handed.
Half of the top fencers in the world are left handed.
The 'unfamiliarity' advantage of being left handed might be high when its a 90/10 split... but when every other match up is vs a lefty its not a 'mirror image of what you are used to' it becomes 'what you are used to'.
Re:Any baseball player or fan could tell you that (Score:5, Insightful)
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Really? I fenced for a few years, and even at the very beginner amateur hobby level I was at -- we had a disproportionate representation of lefties. Probably 20%+ at least.
And likewise, even the junior baseball league I was in when I was around 12 already had coaches eager for left hand pitchers. (I only played for one year, and although I was a lefty, I was lousy at baseball. I'd played soccer for years prior and wanted a change... maybe if I'd played baseball all the way up it would have been different b
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Sinister (Score:2)
The connotation of 'sinister" came from all those sinistral sword-fighters in medieval Europe. Left-handers won all the amateur fights, and by win, that means killed the opponent.
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Still means you're getting four times as much experience against normal people.
Re: Any baseball player or fan could tell you that (Score:2)
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Nuns never hit my hands with a ruler or other object during high school the 70s (the either had given up or the order was more progressive). Neither did my grade school public school teachers harm me in the 60s. But, my dad said his left-handed brother (b. 1927) had his left arm tied behind him to prevent him from writing with his sinister hand. That didn't work and only made him more stubborn. Tending to play ambidextrously (left-handed mits were hard to find so I threw right-handed), I batted left. Ironic
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Looks like I hit a nerve there, caggy.
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A World of Right Handed Mice (Score:2)
Brain organization isn't the only potential factor there. I think most of us southpaws are used to using right-handed mice. I'm potentially taking a dip in mouse accuracy by doing so, but after a lifetime of use I suspect the difference is slight. I'm in no other sense ambidextrous, but with a mouse and keyboard I certainly don't feel like I have an "off hand". So your study would probably want to consider only games with left/right symmetric input devices, if you want to isolate the brain component.
Re: Any baseball player or fan could tell you that (Score:2)
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The counter-issue is that since lefties excel in these sorts of competitions they are attracted to them, so they are over represented even at lower levels of competition.
Perhaps not quite as over-represented as at the highest levels, but still. That's been my experience at least, as a left hander.
I was encouraged to try fencing, I was encouraged to try baseball, specifically because i was left handed, specifically because I was told it would give me an edge.
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One factor in baseball is that four of the eight positions that are not pitcher are closed to left-handed throwers: catcher, second base, shortstop, and third base. Talented left-handed throwers are therefore either used in the outfield, or become pitchers, or in a few edge cases these players learn to throw right-handed -- Pablo Sandoval immediately comes to mind. First basemen don't need the emphasis on throwing skills. Aside from pitchers, the best opportunities are available to players who bat left-hand
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In baseball, the criterion is the ball's angle of travel across the plate. Ideally you want it so the batter can't get a clean look at the ball, and so his bat can't make square contact.
https://sports.stackexchange.c... [stackexchange.com]
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I knew a woman who gave birth to a kid with an extra digit on his left hand. I urged her not to get it amputated.
"Put a baseball in his left hand now! With that extra finger and being left handed, no telling what he'll be able to do as a pitcher! He'll make you millions, and he'll be famous!"
She didn't listen to me.
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This is why left-handed pitchers are so valuable. Baseball players grow up mostly batting against right-handed pitchers, and the movement of a pitch from a left-handed pitchers is almost the mirror image of what they are used to.
Yes, very true - the phenomenon of left-handed pitchers being over represented in baseball is no mystery, and is in fact obvious to baseball fans. But the higher the level of play, the less effective lefties are against right-handed hitters - they are there to get left-handed hitters out, who are also more common there than at the youth level. Right-handed batters crush lefties once they see them enough.
The summary mentions Kershaw, who is arguably the best lefty in the game. However, it is arguable that
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Being opposite handed is an advantage for the batter, not the pitcher. There's two big reason for that:
1) The batter can see the ball easier while it's still in the pitcher's hand. You're looking across the plate toward the pitcher. In a same handed matchup, the pitcher's release point can be behind your back. You loose sight of the ball during the windup and can't track it as quickly. Being opposite handed buys you a little bit more reaction time.
2) In a same handed matchup, most pitches will have horizont
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Completely wrong.
First, you have to understand what are called the platoon splits. In general, more than 90% of batters are better against pitchers that pitch from the opposite side. So right handed batters hit better against lefty pitchers, and lefties bat better against right handed pitchers.
I remember playing baseball as a kid, and one game in particular, we we hitting well against a team from a smaller town 5 miles away, and somehow, there was a large number of left handed kids from the town giving us a
Left-handed BATTERS, on the other hand (Score:2)
As was pointed out above, a handed mismatch is better for the batter, who gets a better view of the ball.
Left-handed BATTERS, on the other hand, have one to two steps less to travel when running for first base. So a left-handed pitcher is better against the more advantaged batters.
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Left-handed BATTERS, on the other hand, have one to two steps less to travel when running for first base.
Left-handed batters also get a momentum boost on startup from decelerating and dropping the bat. A right-hander would have to fling it behind himself to get the equivalent boost, and throwing the bat is a no-no. Instead he loses momentum when slowing it to drop it.
Left handed people need tax cuts (Score:2)
That way, www.leftyslefthanded.com will be able to hire new workers and create jobs that are filled both by left-handed and right-handed people!
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...and everyone else should pay for them. That way, www.leftyslefthanded.com will be able to hire new workers and create jobs that are filled both by left-handed and right-handed people!
No, they just need to use the correct hand. It's called the right hand for a reason. We'll never stand for your pinko commie redistribution of RIGHTfully attained right-handed wealth. Does trickle-down handedness work any better than trickle-down economics?
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The superior species has no need for your stupid charity.
Right-handers are clearly an inferior species, unable to adapt to reality.
We can flush you into oblivion with either hand
Bah, right is RIGHT. There's a reason we run the world and you whine. You will be assimilated. Nay, you have been assimilated, and you just admitted that you've adjusted to our society's ways.
You are not welcome on my new breeding, er, dating site, Righties Only. We will correct these abhorrent genetic anomalies and only the fittest will survive.
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And this was considered to be nature, not nurture.
Weird nature point: lefties and ambidextrous people typically have less of a "sworl" on the crown of their heads, meaning their hair is more symmetrical at the back (righties' hair tends to spiral to behind the left ear before going downwards, lefties' hair tends to go straight down across the back.)
more of the obvious (Score:1)
Just worked it out? WTF? especially in cricket this has been a known thing for decades, cricket teams intentionally strategically put left handers in the batting/bowling lineup as in games where timing is so essential anything even slightly unfamiliar can put the opposing team off their game. A left handed batsman with a right hander in cricket is the worst possible scenario for the fielding team who have to make constant adjustments to fielding and bowling depending on who is at the strikers end
Chess (Score:5, Funny)
Has anyone done a study on how well left handed people play chess?
Let's make a new rule. If you're left handed, your starting position has the king and queen on swapped squares. Then we can see if lefties have a natural advantage there too.
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Let's make a new rule. If you're left handed, your starting position has the king and queen on swapped squares
Even better: let's swap all their pieces left to right !
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And don't forget to mirror all their black and white squares.
Clock position (Score:1)
Over the board it used to be (before wired digital clocks) that the black player decides which side of the board the clock goes.
It gave left-handed players the advantage that against right-handed players the clock was always on their preferred side of the board regardless of the color they were playing.
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Over the board it used to be (before wired digital clocks) that the black player decides which side of the board the clock goes.
Was that part of some weird affirmative action program?
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I have a trouble with calling any sport douche bags elite https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/... [wikipedia.org]. Mindless drones mentally equipped to do the same boring thing over and over and over again and they only ever look publicly good when managed by a Public Relations team, to prevent their shallow often quite primitive behaviour from leaking out and destroying their marketing worth. There is no such thing as an elite athlete beyond government subsidised sports advertising and the foolishness of people willing to accep
Re: Chess (Score:2)
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Has anyone done a study on how well left handed people play chess?
No study needed, we already know they're genetically and intellectually handicapped.
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You can already do this by switching sides, the queen isn't always on the same side of the board since the queen is on her matching color.
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Thanks for that, captain Obvious!
[aside] Bet he's a fucking caggy.
Fencing comes to mind (Score:3)
Inigo Montoya: You are wonderful.
Man in Black: Thank you; I've worked hard to become so.
Inigo Montoya: I admit it, you are better than I am.
Man in Black: Then why are you smiling?
Inigo Montoya: Because I know something you don't know.
Man in Black: And what is that?
Inigo Montoya: I am not left-handed.
[switches sword to his other hand, and begins to fight far more successfully]
Man in Black: You are amazing.
Inigo Montoya: I ought to be, after 20 years.
Man in Black: Oh, there's something I ought to tell you.
Inigo Montoya: Tell me.
Man in Black: I'm not left-handed either.
[switches his own sword to his other hand, suddenly driving Inigo back]
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As a long time practitioner of modern fencing, I can confirm that the findings of this article were quite obvious. I hope the study has enough scientific rigour to bring something on top of that.
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When I had been fencing for about a year, I broke my right arm. I wound up learning how to fence left handed... not very well, but yes, it did give an advantage.
However, since I had learned right handed, I almost had no advantage because I wasn't USED to defending left handed.
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My best two mates at the time were rather comforting in the
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I chose to solve this problem another way: by moving the numeric keypad and cursor keys to the left side of the keyboard [box.com].
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They put a lot of time and effort into that sword fight: How The Princess Bride Built Film’s Most Beloved Sword Fight https://www.vanityfair.com/hol... [vanityfair.com]
Evil lefties (Score:5, Funny)
Obviously some sports are harder to cheat at than others, so those sports do not show a left handed bias.
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"Left handed" compliment means you weren't being sincere. Left-handedness has a long cultural history of being not proper.
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In Christianity ...
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Hm. I think the word you are looking for is sinister
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It is because they are all evil.
We prefer to use sinister.
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Well, not so evil that we'd balance against a duck, anyway..
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I was wondering how long it would be until someone would bring politics into a discussion about right vs left handed. 12 minutes. Your amazing restraint is noted, jackoff-san.
Written just like a lefty. Get him boys.
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I was wondering how long it would be until someone would bring politics into a discussion about right vs left handed. 12 minutes. Your amazing restraint is noted, jackoff-san.
Written just like a lefty. Get him boys.
If it had been written like a lefty in 1950 it would have been all smeared, because they can't resist dragging their less-evolved knuckles across fresh ink. Their inferiority is no less trivial to identify today though, even with hand writing having long since gone extinct. Wrong-handed people will soon go the way of Neanderthals and ink pens.
Got him for ya!
Excel ? (Score:1)
There is a left-hand version of Excel ?
That's probably the one they installed on my computer. It's so cumbersome !
lefties vs lefties (Score:5, Interesting)
It's pretty obvious what the left-handed advantage is when you have sports where lefties can compete directly against other lefties. In my own sport of fencing, lefties enjoy disproportionate success (close to 50% of world champions are left handed), and they are widely regarded as difficult opponents. But pit two lefties against each other and you will often get a shitshow of awkward, hesitant, and poorly-executed techniques, despite the fact that the tactical situation is identical to right-vs-right, the most common and well-understood scenario in the sport.
The reason is easy to understand - everyone, regardless of handedness, gets 85% of their practice against right-handers. Lefties are, quite simply, weird, even to other lefties. We don't get enough practice with them, we don't get the time to develop highly-trained "favourite moves" with them, and we don't ever enjoy the comfort and ease of familiarity. Our cognitive load is increased, and our reaction time is slower.
Unless you're lucky enough to have a left-handed coach, or a disproportionate number of lefties in your club to practice with. Or you simply stick with the sport long enough that the 15% of lefties you meet eventually adds up to a lot of experience.
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I fence with both hands (nearly) equally good, and the opponents favourite is no matter for me. ... Katana or European Longsword.
However, I use two handed swords
If that did not make sense to you: plenty of techniques are one handed, or are what is called half swording.
Or non leftie-relevant sports (Score:2)
Unless you're lucky enough to have a left-handed coach, or a disproportionate number of lefties in your club to practice with. Or you simply stick with the sport long enough that the 15% of lefties you meet eventually adds up to a lot of experience.
Or switch to another sport where handedness doesn't have an impact
(e.g.: archery, because you don't to adapt to the handedness of your opponent.
or skiing, riding, (or chess), etc. because they are all symmetrical sports where the handedness of the participant doesn't change a single thing)
Elite Sports (Score:2)
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Laterality (Score:4, Insightful)
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I am right handed. Started cycling when I was 10 or so. Our coach, Story Redford, I think, taught us to jump off our left foot. That half-stroke advantage could be the difference in a breakaway. We were also capable of responding to a jump with either foot. Also became a better left-wing in soccer then right cause I could control that foot better (and less competition for the position). In my 50's now and I notice I can start nuts and screws or wrench with either hand equally well. Start practicing young, I
Amphibious (Score:2)
Yogi Berra described this perfectly.
"He hits from both sides of the plate. He's amphibious."
https://www.brainyquote.com/qu... [brainyquote.com]
Left/Right (Score:2)
But what about left handed politicians? (Score:3)
Is being a US president an "elite sport"?
Gerald Ford.
Ronald Reagan.
George H.W. Bush.
Bill Clinton.
Barack Obama
All lefties.
Donald Trump is right handed. If you see him using his left hand, it is just Alec Baldwin again.
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Out of how many presidents? Seems to be in line with the population percentage mentioned in the article.
That is 5 of the last 8. There are more but it gets weird if you go too far back. Being left-handed was considered bad or evil so people were often forced to switch. My wife owned and taught in a preschool and even today has had an occasional parent ask her not let their child write with their left hand (she nicely tells them 'no').
I play competetive baseball (Score:2)
The answer is simple. Somebody is throwing a very fast thing at you. It looks very different when this comes from a lefty, since most of the time it comes from a righty. This is true for the batter, the catcher (I do both), and the umpire. Sure, you can say that it because the batter (etc.) has no time to react. But this is simply to repeat what I said above, but in a temporal fashion.
This is on slashdot why?
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The answer is simple. Somebody is throwing a very fast thing at you. It looks very different when this comes from a lefty, since most of the time it comes from a righty. This is true for the batter, the catcher (I do both), and the umpire. Sure, you can say that it because the batter (etc.) has no time to react. But this is simply to repeat what I said above, but in a temporal fashion.
This is on slashdot why?
You may play competitive baseball, but your answer is only valid in little league (I'll be kind and admit that this might continue through high school), where most players both throw and hit righty. The statistics don't lie when they say that right-handed batters hit lefties better than they do righties, and vice versa. At professional levels, and at Division I colleges, lots of players hit from the left side, so lefties are there to get them out especially, not be some sort of novelty that's effective agai
Hockey (Score:2)
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Ice hockey is a bit weird as there are a significant number of "lefties" at the top levels. Youth coaches who know their stuff want the dominant hand on top of the stick which means the player has a left hand shot. It's so lopsided in the NHL that right hand shot defensemen are very in demand.
I'm very familiar with the mechanics of baseball, how pitching/hitting matchups work, and how youth systems develop players (or fail to do so), but why does it work this way in hockey? For a kid that plays baseball or golf or whatever, it seems natural initially to put the dominant hand lower on a hockey stick. Is it actually better to have the dominant hand on top? I never played a lot of hockey but I know I was much more comfortable with my right hand closer to the business end of the stick, as with a bat
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Ice hockey is a bit weird as there are a significant number of "lefties" at the top levels. Youth coaches who know their stuff want the dominant hand on top of the stick which means the player has a left hand shot. It's so lopsided in the NHL that right hand shot defensemen are very in demand.
I'm very familiar with the mechanics of baseball, how pitching/hitting matchups work, and how youth systems develop players (or fail to do so), but why does it work this way in hockey? For a kid that plays baseball or golf or whatever, it seems natural initially to put the dominant hand lower on a hockey stick. Is it actually better to have the dominant hand on top? I never played a lot of hockey but I know I was much more comfortable with my right hand closer to the business end of the stick, as with a bat or club. I understand that the flow of play on the ice should be symmetrical, thus the need for both lefty and righty shots, just not why players learn one way or the other.
Wait, I've got it - it's less about the shot and more about one-handed stick work and the transition into the shot, isn't it? Therein lies the difference between hockey and baseball, cricket, or golf - the need to use the whacker-thing in different ways, sometimes with one hand and sometimes with both. Maybe?
Re: Hockey (Score:2)
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Ice hockey is a bit weird
You could just stop there you know.
Bowling (Score:2)
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I watched a professional match where four of the final five (the "ladder") bowlers were left-handed. It was fun to see them suddenly scrambling to deal with a breakdown in the oil pattern that right-handed bowlers face in every single competition, while the right-hander was the one who could settle into a groove. (He didn't last long despite this.)
Baseball is about geometry (Score:1)
In baseball, it's more about geometry than how frequently you see left-handers.
Right-handed batters bat from the third-base side of home plate. When facing a right handed pitcher, curve balls curve towards the batter's body. When facing a left-handed pitcher, curve balls curve away from their body. Left-handed hitters are the opposite. They bat from the first-base side of the plate. For them, left-handed curve balls break towards the batter's body, and right-handed curve balls break away from their b
Outliers by Malcom Gladwell Explains This (Score:1)
. . . because the cut off for each age group, when they are kids, is Dec 31.
If you are a little better than everyone else young(a few months older or left handed in a sport with time pressure), you get more attention from the coaches, more playing time, and get better. That compounds over years.
The book Outliers is a great read and explains all this.
Even if left handedness's advantage gets diluted later in life when half
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And I drink with my left hand. Nothing I can do to alter it.
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And I drink with my left hand. Nothing I can do to alter it.
That is entirely natural: it leaves your sword hand free.
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The ball is bowled at around 140-160kph from about 20 yards away from you. That gives you less than 0.4s to respond to the trajectory. It's a bit longer than baseball, for example, but that is somewhat mitigated by the increased area that the ball can reach you, with deliberately attempting to make it bounce into your body or face completely legitimate (and actively encouraged in some situations).
A close catcher in cricket has approximately half that time to catch the ball, which borders on the limits of human reactions.
Test matches are five day long competitions the results of which depend on a couple of thousand actions that all happen in the blink of an eye.
But bowlers don't switch hands as they're running up, the batsman knows what's coming just like he knows whether it's a spin or pace bowler at the other end.
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Yes, but Tim Tebow counts double.
(would have been funnier a couple years ago. I'll mod myself down.)