Why Aren't Lefthanders an Identity Group?

There hasn't been a lefthanded catcher since the 1980s.

Way back in 2012, I pointed out that Major League Baseball appears to discriminate against lefthanded catchers — no lefthander has caught in the big leagues since 1989.

There are 30 MLB teams and they typically carry two catchers each. If lefthanders are 10% of the population on average, they should comprise 6 of the 60 or so MLB catchers at any one point. But instead they have been nonexistent back to the 1990s.

And yet, nobody seems to care.

Lefthanders are one of those apparent identity groups, such as albinos, that nobody much cares about.

This is not to say that baseball overall is prejudiced against lefthanders.

In the early 20th Century, many progressive scientists believed that society should socially deconstruct left-handedness … for reasons … that scientists then found convincing, but that now seem pig-headed.

For example, Ronald Reagan was the first of three straight Presidents who were natural left-handers. But Reagan was arduously socially constructed in his childhood into a right-hander.

In contrast, his successors, George H. W. Bush and Bill Clinton were out of the closet lefties. I can recall the 1992 Presidential debates at which Bush, Clinton, and Perot were all taking notes left-handed.

Personally, I’m a righty. But the decline of anti-lefty bigotry in 1992 struck me as a good thing at the time because anti-lefty prejudice seems stupid.

Why did America become less bigoted against left-handers in the first half of the 20th century?

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