Baseball's Off-Handed Players

[Kibbee Nayee]

It's referred to as Baseball's Oddest Fraternity, the players who throw with their left hand and bat with their right hand.

Think about it for a minute....it makes sense why it would be so rare. Left-handed batters have that little extra edge, about a step and a half closer to first base than a right handed batter. That little advantage alone accounts for all the great lefty hitters throughout baseball history, from Tony Gwynn and Wade Boggs, to Ted Williams, Ty Cobb, Lou Gehrig, Babe Ruth, and hundreds of others. Throw in the fact that over two-thirds of all pitchers are right-handed, and the edge that the lefty hitter enjoys is pretty good compared to the righty hitter.

Then there's throwing....the right-handed thrower can play all nine positions in the field, but the lefty thrower never plays catcher, third base, shortstop or second base, mostly because of the awkward throwing situations that would arise (not to mention that a third baseman needs his glove hand to the infield side of the bag for defensive purposes.)

So the lefthanded thrower who is also a righthanded hitter is extremely rare, because of its double off-handedness. The best of them was Rickey Henderson, the only Hall of Famer in the group. The only other one that rises to the level of baseball notoriety was Hal Chase, who is known as baseball's most corrupt player. And the only other player in that fraternity worth noting was the first baseman at Yale in the '40s, George H. W. Bush.