The "It Must Be In The Genes!" Story

It was an ordinary day.  Our grandson's first baseball game of the new season and Carol and I are naturally in attendance.  Day proved to be sunny, but rather chilly.  Not the perfect day for Grandparents to be along the sidelines, but hey...you do what you have to do.  And, we have to be sitting in the cool air, bundled up, watching a baseball game.  When my oldest son began playing baseball I was his coach.  I coached him for two years and realized he needed better competition if he was going to get better so I inquired about the next level of competition.  The team already had a coach so I decided to let my son play for the other coach.  The team was very good and my left-handed son, who happened to be a pitcher, succeeded for the next two years with his new coach.  Well, that coach was in attendance at my grandson's baseball game today, since his grandson happened to be on the same team.  As soon as I saw him I approached him to talk a bit about our grandsons and baseball.  As soon as he saw me he shook my hand and said, "Your grandson throws with the wrong arm!"  

If you're wondering what he meant, he always loved coaching my son because my son was a left-hander.   My son eventually became one of the best baseball players in Lancaster County and was rewarded with a full scholarship to play the game he loved at Villanova University.  The pros came calling in a few years, but an injury to his left arm nixed the chance to play professionally.  Having a left-hander in the family wasn't new to Carol and me since my younger brother was born a lefty and Carol's cousin, who played professional baseball, was a lefty.  I grew up seeing all the things my brother had to conquer during his lifetime as a lefty so when my oldest son threw his first ball left-handed, I knew what he was in for during his life.  Carol and I talked about the problems our son was going to have in school since we both remember teachers striking you on the hand with a stick if you didn't hold your pencil in your right hand.  

During first grade our son's teacher brought in another teacher who was also left-handed to teach our son how to hold his pencil and how to position the paper properly.  I was lucky to live, as well as teach, in a school district that felt it necessary to instruct students no matter how different they may be from the majority of the other students.  That meant both mental and physical differences.  Most people, unless you have a child, relative or may be left-handed yourself, don't realize all the problems that go with being left-handed.  Little things like buttoning your shirt differently or having to reach across your plate to pick up the correct utensil for eating are minor to us, but can be a big deal for a child.  And, when school starts you have to sit in a chair that you slide into on the left side since it has the writing board part on the right side.  When it comes to cutting you have to learn how to use right-handed scissors.  Have you ever thought about the fact that we live in a right-handed world?  

Left-hander Albert Einstein.

Driving a car is geared to someone right-handed.  Playing many musical instruments is geared to right-handers.  In school you have spiral notebooks, writing in a three-ring binder, ball-point pens don't work correctly at times, the number pad is on the right side of some computer keyboards.  Even cooking can be a challenge since measuring cups are meant to be used by right-handed people.  If you took the courses I taught in high school, you needed to operate your camera with your right hand and when running the printing presses, you had to operate them with with your right hand.  Controllers on video games are geared to right-handers.  Even the flippers on most pinball machines are geared to righties.  The list goes on and on and for right-handed people it's no big deal, but to lefties it can be a challenge so great that they give up at times.  But, one place where left-handers seem to excel is in sports.  In baseball my son was successful since many players see very few left-handed pitchers so he had the advantage on them.  

He may not be left-handed, but he can still throw hard!

Left-handed batters are a few steps closer to first base, thus get there faster.  And, a left-handed boxer would have a great advantage since opponents don't know how to guard against the left hand punch.  There have been many famous left-handed people such as Leonardo da Vinci, U.S. Presidents George H.W. Bush, William Clinton and Barack Obama and talk snow host Oprah Winfrey.  And how could anyone forget the famous Albert Einstein who changed the world's ideas about time, space and being left-handed.  Well, my grandson doesn't happen to be left-handed, but he can still throw the ball using his entire body as well as his right arm which sent 6 of the first 7 batters back to bench after striking out.  It was another extraordinary day in the life of an ordinary guy.