Is there such a thing as the Left Hand Advantage in sports?
Over the years a lot of people have noticed that a lot of left handed people seem to excel at sports. Even though there is no scientific evidence to support the claim that being left handed gives a person an advantage over another in a sport, people are
still fascinated by it.
There seems to be a lot of circumstantial evidence that can be shown about the numbers of famous sports stars who are or were left handed but the science still eludes us. One reason that has been given as a theory could be that left handed people might be
better at sports because of an extra advantage it gives them.
Looking over the research shows that being left handed actually does give a person an advantage in some particular aspects of some sports but they are the same as right handed players in almost all other sports out there.
Southpaws have always been prominent in sports. As far back as Babe Ruth, who was a left handed player but wrote with his right hand, we have seen some strong sports stars who play with their other hand. About 10% of the world’s population is left handed,
so it may seem strange to us why so many of them do so well in sports. Left handed athletes grow up learning to hold equipment differently because it is usually made for a right handed person. There are numerous examples of famous lefties that we can see from
many different sports.
Cricket has a large number of very talented lefties; Brian Lara, Kumar Sangakkara, Chris Gayle, Adam Gilchrist, Wasim Akram, Daniel Vettori and many others. If we take a look at other sports, the list of great athletes grows; Arnold Palmer, John McEnroe,
Oscar De La Hoya and Babe Ruth are just some of the many talented athletes that have played a sport. One of the newest cricketing talents, Muhammad Aamir, who is currently embroiled in a spot fixing scandal, is also a very skilled left handed bowler. The recently
crowned US Open tennis champion Rafael Nadal also plays with his left hand.
Even though there is no overarching evidence that shows us that being left handed is a clear advantage in sports, there are some very specific parts of some sports where it actually does help a person to be a lefty. Tennis is one sport where being a lefty
does not matter in the slightest. There have been only two strong left handed players in the men’s top ten of the world rankings in the last few years with Nadal being one of them. Similarly on the women’s side there has only been one female tennis player,
Pattie Schnyder, who managed to finish in the top ten in the last four years. But the scenario changes when we look at baseball.
There is no hard evidence that being a left handed pitcher in the game gives a player an advantage, it seems that there is some in batting. Studies have shown that a left handed batter is able to see the ball better than a right handed one. Due to the way
the left handed batter stands, a right handed pitcher will pitch the ball in a general sweep towards the lefty; this way the ball becomes easier to see and easier to hit. The batter is also one step closer to first base and so can get there faster. In the
last four years out of the current crop of batters in the MLB in America, 22 out of 40 top batters measured by On-Base Percentage were left handed ones. Much more research needs to be done to come up with a conclusive answer to whether it does actually help
to be a left handed batter in baseball but at least this is a start.
One of the reasons why some people are fascinated by lefties in sports could be because there are so few of them around. Maybe because we see more left handed people in sports on television as opposed to our daily lives we attribute advantageous qualities
to them being left handed. A lot more scientific research needs to take place until we actually come up with an answer to the question of whether lefties have an advantage in sports. For the time being it is up to everyone out there to make up their own minds
on the subject.
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