(EDITOR’S NOTE: When I was a young pup, my father’s CF Harold Buck told me about a pitcher who could throw right-handed and left-handed. “No way,” I said. “Yep … he is amphibious.” My father corrected him “Bucky, you mean ambidextrous.” Replied Buck: “That’s what I said ... wasn’t it?”

Greg Harris threw right-handed and then left-handed to C Joe Siddall (Windsor, Ont.) for the Montreal Expos against the Cincinnati Reds in 1995. It was the first time a big-leaguer had done so since the 1800s.

Pat Venditte used both arms pitching with the 2015 Oakland A’s, eight games with the 2016 Toronto Blue Jays, before moving on to pitch for the Seattle Mariners, Los Angeles Dodgers, San Francisco Giants and Miami Marlins. Vendette faced 160 hitters right-handed and 152 left-handed in his 72 1/3 innings in the majors. And then one night I wandered into The Baseball Zone in Mississauga and Harold Buck’s words from 60 years ago came flowing back ...)

January 9, 2022

A Terrible Advertisement for Canadian Tire

By Daniel Peng

Ontario Terriers

“You’re a righty, right?”

I nodded.

My mom and I had gone glove shopping at Canadian Tire for my first season of Little League ball, and we were trying to decide on a glove.

Of course, I don’t remember the exact dialogue word-for-word when I got my first glove since I was seven years old at the time, but I imagine it went something like that.

After all, why wouldn’t I think I was a lefty? I wrote with my right hand, I normally kicked a soccer ball with my right foot - what reason was there to believe I was anything other than right-handed? Even for my first two years of Little League, I was comfortable throwing with my right hand. Even though I hit left, I thought nothing of it and don’t even remember why I made the decision.

For some reason, going into my third summer of Little League, my mom (Tracy) had suggested I start throwing with my left hand. Why she did, I don’t know. I don’t remember any of the specifics, but I do remember that I was strongly against it and did not want to. Because I was nine at the time, I don’t remember literally anything that happened.

I do, however, remember the short-lived bliss of when I threw with my left hand for the first time. Instead of it being awkward, it felt perfect from start to finish, straight from the cocking of the elbow back to the release. The ball sailed in the palm like it was like a cloud and flew. Of course, I was nine, so that was a gross exaggeration of what it was actually like - I doubt the ball even reached whoever I was throwing it to - but the bigger part had been that it just felt so natural, so right.

Not only had it felt as regular as my right ever could have, it felt even better. Thus was the way I had learned my left arm was actually the dominant one and I threw with my left hand for the many seasons following, my right arm plunged into irrelevance. Well, not really, since I still used it for writing and literally anything except sports.

I thought nothing of my right hand for a while, until my 12th birthday. My parents had given me a right-handed glove, the same one that I still use today. I’d been very confused at the time, but I do vaguely remember my mom being excited and saying that I could start throwing with both, a proposition that I overlooked and honestly, had thought she was crazy for even suggesting.

At first, I did try throwing with my right hand and admittedly, I was better at throwing than other people throwing with their other hand, but that was only because of my experience from before. It felt much more unnatural than my left hand had, and I ultimately stopped after only a week or so.

I don’t remember when, but it had been at some point that I decided to just throw with my right hand for the heck of it. It felt pretty uncomfortable and unnatural, and it still does to this day. But the biggest factor is that it wasn’t as uncomfortable as it should have been, as it felt for others.

I couldn’t throw as fast as I could with my left arm, though neither of my arms even went that fast in the first place. Of course, that was only natural, given that my mechanics weren’t perfect and my right arm was a lot weaker. But still, it was passable on camera and within a few weeks or so, it actually started to look pretty natural and it was almost like I had always been a righty - until someone saw my left side, that is.

I don’t think I’m able to throw right-handed because I was always capable of it: if I had been born with with a dominant right hand, there would be zero reason it still feels a little awkward with every throw, like a slightly off-tune violin. I attribute it almost entirely to those first two years of throwing righty, especially since when I started throwing, it was with my right hand. It was what I learned first.

Throwing with my right hand was always an off-and-on thing: I was never encouraged to, rather I was discouraged by my past coaches. After all, why wouldn’t they? I hadn’t put nearly the same amount of practice into it, so it was much slower and much less accurate.

So why should I even bother during those precious three hours a week of baseball? I’d take a look at my glove, throw a couple with my right hand, and think nothing of it for a couple months. Rinse and repeat. I did occasionally show people, but it felt more of just a party trick than a viable skill I could bring out during a game.

Again, because I hadn’t put nearly that much practice into it. I did grow accustomed to hearing people ask me if I had one of those six-fingered gloves, but my response was always the same: “$300 and three months to ship from Japan.” Not to mention how I’d barely need it. My parents did say I could get one once I became proficient enough with my right arm, but I have yet to reach that.

Despite putting much less work into it, I still decided to attempt to tryout for teams with it, for some inane reason. As one might expect, it didn’t help much. I do remember this brief stint of time when I had learned about Pat Venditte, an ambidextrous pitcher that had made it to the majors. I think I heard of him because of a past coach, and while I do remember his story being an inspiration to me, that inspiration ultimately faded after some time.

Had I practiced with it a lot more than I did, it might be on par with my left arm by now. However, I did not and I rarely touched my righty glove, sometimes throwing a couple for the fun of it. It was the same thing on repeat: think about it, throw, think nothing of it for a couple months. That was, until I met coach Ian Bala a couple months ago.

He had been intrigued by it during an Ontario Terriers tryout, but it was still very much a work in progress. I still treated it as a party trick, thinking it’d never be good enough for in-game use and that I shouldn’t bother. But a suggestion from my coach a month ago or so changed that: “It’s the offseason, and the offseason is for development, so why not?”

I figured that made sense. After all, I hadn’t put enough time into it to see tangible results, and it had the potential to develop faster than if I started throwing for the very first time. Even after one week, I was able to notice a difference. Three or so weeks in, I tried doing long toss with it. It was much less clumsier, I was getting a better feel for it, and the ball went much faster than it ever had. In that single session, I saw potential. It was a small amount of potential, a tiny sliver of it that’d take lots of time to develop. It’d probably never fully come to fruition, but why not try?

In a sense, as much as my mom loves to (jokingly) gloat about it, I suppose I do owe this to her. If I hadn’t started baseball with my right hand, if I hadn’t gotten a right-handed glove from Canadian Tire that day, I suppose that tiny sliver would have never existed.