Although he plays basketball right-hand dominant, Lebron James is actually left handed. Credit: Sportsrush

Mixed-handers make up less than 1% of the world’s population

They’re actually lefties

LeBron James writes with his left hand, eats with his left hand, and uses his dominant left hand for almost everything in his life—except his job.

He is a natural lefty and basketball righty.

This may be the weirdest thing about having a hidden physical idiosyncrasy known as mixed-handedness: It’s not that weird if you work in the NBA.

According to a Wall Street Journal analysis based on examining photographs of NBA players signing autographs, about 8% of the league’s All-Stars over the last decade write with one hand and play with the other.

There’s a difference between mixed-handedness and the more common phenomenon of ambidexterity. While being truly ambidextrous means being equally skillful with both hands, almost everybody in the NBA is ambidextrous to some extent.

Scholars believe that 1% of people are mixed-handed, which means they’re as likely to use their left hand and right hand, while roughly 10% are mixed-handed enough to perform some tasks with one and some with the other.

“I have no idea why I became a righty,” James said in 2017. “I just thought it looked cool—till I got older. Now I wish I were a lefty because those shots look a lot better.”

Sean Doolittle is one in a long line of famous southpaw pitchers (including Whitey Ford, Warren Spahn, and Sandy Koufax). In 2019, Doolittle was the closer, helping the Washington Nationals win Game One of the World Series.

“In baseball, I think [left-handedness] definitely is a good thing,” he said. “I got brought in the eighth inning when they had a left-handed hitter up. And so, I got the final out of the eighth inning, and I finished the ninth inning, and we got the win.”

“Because in baseball there are much fewer left-handed pitchers, so the ball is coming in on a different angle,” he said.

But like most human beings, left- or right-handed, Doolittle is also a mixed-handed: “I play golf right-handed, I kick with my right foot, I’m pretty good with scissors!” he said. “I just realized this: I bat lefty, but I swing a golf club righty. That’s pretty weird.”

Tyler Shindo plays baseball in Honolulu Little League is also unique: he’s an ambidextrous pitcher and a switch hitter but he is also mixed-handed.

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“Everything he does is a bit chop suey,” Tyler’s dad Dustin said. “He eats lefty but he brushes his teeth right, he’s a right-footer, writes left, so, back and forth, maybe he can do the right-hand throwing and you know that that was the beginning of it.”

It went to another level when Tyler started pitching with both hands when he was 9 years old. An extremely rare sight on a diamond.

“Pitching took a long time to learn both sides,” Tyler said. “There’s a long time to be able to switch back and forth and throw strikes. So, it took me like a year.”

The now 12-year-old uses a specially ordered glove with six fingers so he can use it on either hand, allowing him to switch which hand he throws with at any time.

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