Lefties : Make no mistake, it’s a right-hander’s world. Except in sports--where being out of step can put a player in sync.

Toward the end of last baseball season in the Seattle Kingdome, Don Mattingly trotted out of the New York Yankee dugout to start the fifth inning and headed for third base. He played the rest of the game there, and the next two games as well. To those unfamiliar with baseball, this seemed to be no big deal. Mattingly is, after all, an infielder, a superb athlete and a terrific hitter.

But Mattingly is also something else. He is left-handed. And seeing a left-handed third baseman, especially at the major league level, is bizarre.

“I know I felt pretty funny out there, so I can only imagine how weird I looked,” Mattingly said at the time.

In major league history, only about 20 left-handers have ever played third base. The last was Mike Squires of the Chicago White Sox during the 1984 season. Usually, left-handers are only used as emergency fill-ins; Mattingly was substituting for Mike Pagliarulo, who was injured.

The reasons are fairly simple: on bunts, slow rollers or anything hit down the line, a lefty third baseman has to either twist his entire body awkwardly or make nearly a complete clockwise spin to get off an accurate throw to first base. And a lefty third baseman is at an extreme disadvantage on a grounder hit to his left, because he has to reach across his body and try to back-hand the ball.

Mattingly did OK during his short stay at third. He committed only one error--a wild throw to first base--while handling 12 grounders like an all-star.

“We got away with it for three games because Mattingly is so good,” said then-Yankee coach Don Zimmer, who has since joined the San Francisco Giants. “But we know it couldn’t have gone on forever. We knew the roof might cave in. Left-handers just aren’t third basemen.”

Said Yankee Manager Lou Piniella: “Even I admit he looked pretty strange out there. It was odd.”

Ah, odd. Now that’s a word Mattingly and all left-handers are used to hearing as they are often forced to struggle through a right-handed world. In addition to being virtually prohibited from playing some positions in baseball and being considered outcasts entirely in some sports, they have endured a lifetime of being ridiculed.

It is no wonder, then, that these folks--and they make up between 10 and 15% of the general population--who wear their wristwatches on their right arm would love to give the rest of us a slap alongside the head, with their left hand, of course, for the daily abuse we heap upon them and the inconvenience we cause in their lives.

Perhaps Mattingly and other left-handers can find some relief in the medical profession. Perhaps those who have been involved in intense study of left-handedness can offer them some reassurance that there is nothing wrong with them.

Perhaps not.

The left side of the brain controls, for the most part, the right side of the body. The right side of the brain governs movement of the left side of the body. Injury to the left side of the brain will, according to Dr. Paul Satz of UCLA, force the nervous system to shift responsibility for some functions to the right side of the brain, thus creating left-handers from people who probably should have been right-handed.

Satz, one of the nation’s foremost authorities on the subject who has spent the past 25 years studying left-handedness, said many left-handers are a result of this restructuring of the nervous system.

“Trauma, injury or disease occurs in these people either while the immature prenatal nervous system is in progression, or in other cases where an injury occurs somewhere early in their infancy, but before the age of five or six,” said Satz.

“The brain’s plasticity is so great that the whole nervous system can get reorganized and rewired. Left-side brain functions are transferred to the uninjured right side of the brain.”

But just as many left-handers are created, Satz said, by natural, genetic or environmental factors.

“There is the tendency by scientists and other medical personnel to treat the concept as a homogeneous entity, to assume that all left-handers are alike and that all have the same origins,” he said. “That just is not true. There are vastly different causes for left-handedness.”

And, in the sports world, vastly different results.

Ever watch a left-hander play golf? Now there are certainly some exceptions, but for the most part, watching a person play golf left-handed is like watching a cape buffalo do the rumba. It’s not a pretty sight. There are many theories on why golf is almost exclusively a right-hander’s game. For one, until recently it was difficult to find left-handed clubs. For another, all golf courses are designed for a right-hander’s natural swing, which imparts a right-to-left flight of the ball. Most left-handed golfers spend as much time up against trees as does bark.

“The worst part was trying to learn the game from a right-handed instructor,” said Tim Peterson, a lefty who played baseball at Cal State Northridge and was on a Dodger rookie team for 10 years. “Golf lessons made no sense at all to me. He’d be holding the club this way and I’d be holding it the opposite way. Nothing made sense.”

In football, being left- or right-handed is only apparent at the quarterback position, where Ken Stabler and Boomer Esiason have made their marks in the NFL. Darren Renfro, a reserve left-handed quarterback for Hart High School in Newhall, has encountered some problems, though.

“The receivers tell me the ball spins the wrong way when I throw and they can’t catch it,” Renfro said. “I think it’s just a lousy excuse. They usually tell me about the wrong spin after they drop a pass.”

In the NBA, having left-handed tendencies is actually an advantage. When attempting to block a right-handed shot, a lefty’s dominant hand is on the same side as the ball. Two of the best shot blockers ever, Bill Russell of the Boston Celtics in the 1950s and ‘60s, and current giant Mark Eaton of UCLA and the Utah Jazz, are lefties. When dribbling or shooting left-handed, the advantage comes simply because it is unusual and defenders must make an adjustment to it.

Left-handers have virtually dominated tennis over the last 10 years. Rod Laver, Jimmy Connors, John McEnroe, Martina Navratilova, Guillermo Vilas, and Roscoe Tanner all swing from the left side. The spin they put on the ball is opposite of what their right-handed opponents are used to.

Middleweight boxing champion Marvin Hagler is left-handed. Even some of the great bowlers, including Earl Anthony, have been left-handers.

And Bruce Jenner capped a gold medal performance in the 1976 Olympic decathlon by grabbing a tiny American flag and waving it furiously on the track. With his left hand.

“Only in one event did being left-handed make any difference at all, and that was the discus,” Jenner said. “All discus fields are set up for right-handers, meaning the prevailing wind blows in their favor. It may seem like a small difference, but I know that a good wind accounts for an extra 10 feet in the discus, and as a left-hander, I was always throwing across the wind.”

In the pole vault, Jenner learned as a right-hander, but found himself thrusting off his inside--or right--leg, as a left-hander would.

“I took off on the wrong foot and my coaches wanted to change it, but I was jumping 16 feet, so I figured why play around with it,” he said. “Technically I did it wrong, but I got the results I wanted so I didn’t change.”

And Jenner had this advice for left-handers at meal time: “Always go for the end of the table and you’ll have no major problems. I’ve always done that, and I haven’t given anyone a black eye yet at the dinner table.”

Left-handed hunters face a unique problem when using bolt-action and semi-automatic rifles. With both guns, the empty cartridge is ejected from the right side of the gun. If you shoot left-handed, that means it ejects against the side of your face. And 95% of all fishing reels are made for right-handers.

Lefthanders International, an organization based in Topeka, Kan., publishes a magazine for lefties that is, as you might guess, bound on the right side and reads from back to front for right-handers. In a recent edition of the magazine the group claims that “In sports, lefties have the advantage in baseball, tennis, boxing and underwater diving.”

Come to think of it, the magazine could be right. For example, try to name just one famous right-handed underwater diver.

It is in baseball, however, that left-handers--although being culled from that same 10% to 15% of the general population--have made the heaviest impact, despite being virtually banned from playing four of the nine positions. The southpaw list includes the most famous player of all, Babe Ruth, who was a brilliant left-handed pitcher before he became the game’s most feared home-run hitter. Other exceptional left-handed hitters included Ty Cobb, Lou Gehrig, Ted Williams, Mel Ott, Stan Musial, Tris Speaker, Eddie Mathews, Duke Snider, Rod Carew, Willie McCovey, Carl Yastrezmski, Reggie Jackson, George Brett and Mattingly.

“Left-handed batters have the obvious advantage of being a stride and a half closer to first base when they stand at the plate,” said Bob Hiegert, a longtime baseball coach in the San Fernando Valley and now athletic director at Cal State Northridge. “If you’re a fast runner, that step and a half is a huge advantage. Even if you’re a slower runner, being left-handed greatly reduces the chances of grounding into double plays.”

Left-handed pitchers have made an even larger impact, from the days of Warren Spahn, Lefty Grove, Carl Hubbell, Whitey Ford and Sandy Koufax, to the current crop that includes Fernando Valenzuela and Steve Carlton.

There seem to be as many theories on why left-handed pitchers are so successful as there are Chinese food stains on Tom Lasorda’s uniform. The most common theory is a simple one: Because there are, relatively, so few southpaws, batters are never able to adjust to them.

Sparky Anderson, manager of the Detroit Tigers, believes in this theory.

“You just don’t see them enough,” he said. “Just one in every four games on the average. You see three right-handers and get used to seeing that delivery from that spot. Then, all of a sudden, here’s a guy standing on the mound and you feel like you’ve got a mirror. Everything’s different, all the angles, everything. By the time you get used to that, he’s gone, the game’s over and you get three more right-handers.”

But others hold up another theory, one that says left-handers put more spin on a baseball, causing curveballs to break sharper, sliders to sink faster and fastballs to jump more.

Anderson also believes in this theory.

“No question about it,” he said. “A good lefty has more movement on the ball than a good right-hander. No one knows why. It must be the release point or something, but with the fastball or curve or anything, a good lefty is always better than a good righty.”

Hiegert, who coached several players who went on to the major leagues--including Jason Thompson and the late Lyman Bostock--at Northridge, said left-handers will always be crucial to baseball.

“We tried to get as many left-handed batters as we could. And as many left-handed pitchers as we could,” he said. “The more the better. The game of baseball really favors left-handers.”

But with the proven value of left-handers in baseball, there remain the obvious drawbacks, too. As the Great Mattingly Experiment reminded us, there is no place for lefties at third base on a permanent basis. Same for the second base and shortstop positions, for pretty much the same reasons.

And perhaps strangest of all is seeing a left-handed catcher--the rarest thing in baseball. The main reason is that it is very difficult for a left-handed catcher to consistently throw out runners at second base. The catcher must be turned slightly towards third base, preparing to plant his left leg to throw to second base, and, with a left-handed batter at the plate, the catcher cannot see the runner at first until he has already gotten a huge jump. And because the majority of hitters bat from the left side, the catcher’s throwing arm would be on the same side of the plate as the batter 80% of the time, making it difficult to get off an unobstructed throw.

Because of those reasons, a left-handed catcher’s mitt is about as easy to find as blue jeans and sneakers in Liberace’s closet, so left-handed kids never even get to try catching.

Lefties are left to pitch, play first base--where they have an advantage in making the tag on a pickoff play--and play the outfield, where there are no major advantages or disadvantages. Right-handers pretty much rule the rest of the game.

There is a third class of people, people who are neither right-handed nor left-handed. They are ambidextrous, or, as a local boxer once proclaimed himself, “both-handed.”

Former President Gerald Ford is somewhat unique. He considers himself left-handed, but does most everything right-handed while he’s standing up and most everything left-handed while he’s sitting down.

A true ambidextrous person is Reggie Smith Jr., son of former Dodgers star Reggie Smith. Smith, a freshman at USC and a multisport athlete, throws a baseball or anything smaller with his left hand. He throws a softball and a football with his right hand. In a few instances, he has played a high school baseball game left-handed for a few innings then switched to the right side. He brings both a left- and right-hand baseball glove to all games.

“It’s really pretty evenly split,” he said. “I can play pool either way, and that’s an advantage on some shots. In tennis I have no backhand. I just switch the racket to either hand so I always hit forehands.”

All of this can get confusing, though.

“When I was young, I found that I could write backwards,” Smith said. “Like looking in a mirror. The letters go right to left and you can read it perfectly when you hold it up to a mirror. I don’t know how I learned it. It just seemed to make sense to me.”

Much of the negative aura about left-handers stems from the word itself. The Latin word for left is “sinister.” In French, left is “gauche,” which has evolved through the English language to mean something that is socially unacceptable. In Italian, mancino means both left-handed and dishonest. The word lyft in Old English meant worthless.

And left-handers everywhere have not been helped much at all by some of their own.

Former major league pitcher Bill Lee is left-handed. He wrote a book entitled “The Wrong Stuff,” which includes this passage:

“I believe the thing about marijuana that causes a stoner for people is that the majority of the population is right-handed. This means that they think with the left side of the brain. When they get high, they become aware that they are using the wrong side of their gray matter, and this tends to disorient them. But left-handers, such as yours truly, are used to using the right side of the brain. The correct side. The smoke puts us totally in sync with nature, and we have no trouble handling it.”

Lee, it should be noted here, was nicknamed “Spaceman,” and once referred publicly to his manager on the Boston Red Sox, Don Zimmer, as a gerbil. A gerbil is a small rodent.

“Maybe left-handers are goofier than the rest of us, but maybe not,” Zimmer said, apparently having forgotten or forgiven Lee.

Sparky Anderson, who has been in professional baseball for more than 30 years, also doesn’t buy the theory that left-handers are, by nature, halfway to a padded room.

“Lefties aren’t any goofier than anybody else,” he said. “There are so few of them that people see them as different. But they’re not really any different. I’ve seen some pretty goofy right-handers in baseball, believe me.”

But lefty Terry Forster, former Angels reliever, disagrees.

“Sure, we’re a little different. We’re goofier. That’s a fact,” he said near the end of last season. “Although there are some right-handed guys on this team that I swear had to be left-handed when they were young.

“You know what bothers me the most? Refrigerator doors. They open the wrong way. We have a side-by-side, and I’m trying to get a cold one out of the refrigerator and I always open the freezer by mistake.”

A quick glace at Forster’s girth makes one wonder why he even bothers having doors on his refrigerator or freezer.

But for every Forster or Bill Lee, there is a famous left-hander who has not given lefties a less-than-favorable name. This list includes former President Harry Truman, musicians Bob Dylan, Paul McCartney and Ringo Starr, entertainers Dan Ackroyd, Robert Blake, George Burns, Sid Caesar, Billy Crystal, Richard Dreyfuss, Peter Fonda, Cary Grant, Rex Harrison, Goldie Hawn, Michael Landon, Marsha Mason, Kristy McNichol, Ryan O’Neal, Richard Pryor, Robert Redford, Don Rickles, Dick Van Dyke, James Whitmore, Joanne Woodward, Charlie Chaplin, W.C. Fields, Judy Garland and Marilyn Monroe.

Historical figures who were left-handed--but kept it secret by not wearing wristwatches--include Alexander the Great, Bach, Charlemagne, Leonardo da Vinci, Joan of Arc, Napoleon, Michelangelo and Mark Twain.

None of them, however, were ever asked to play third base.

“The three games at third were fun,” Mattingly said. “But I didn’t belong there. I was glad to get back to first base where we belong.”