Tym Glaser/ColumnistOKAY FOLKS, here's a little pop quiz: What do the following historical greats have in common? Alexander the Great, Julius Caesar, Joan of Arc, Charlemagne, Napoleon, Michelangelo, Leonardo da Vinci, Albert Einstein, Benjamin Franklin, Sir Isaac Newton, Pablo Picasso and Beethoven.
Give up? Okay, they were all left-handed. Boy, for such a small segment of the population (about 13 per cent nowadays) we lefties have certainly done more than our share.
Despite being called 'molly-dookers', 'cack-handers', 'gauche', 'sinister handed' and 'southpaws', and being blighted by scissors, which simply don't work for lefties, and ring folders and exercise books, which cripple any chance of writing halfway decently we persevere and excel.
And nowhere is that more apparent than in the world of sport.
Just watching the compelling all-lefty French Open final between Rafael Nadal and Mariano Puerta on Sunday brought that all into sharp focus.
For some reason, tennis has produced a disproportionate amount of greats. Maybe it's because the natural left-handed serve spins to a 'righty's' backhand or perhaps they (right-handers) are just not used to lefty angles, but check out this little pantheon of tennis greats who play the right, err, left way: Norman Brookes, Neale Fraser, Rod Laver, Tony Roche, John McEnroe, Jimmy Connors, Ivan Lendl, Goran Ivanisevic and now young Nadal. I'd put any three of them in a tie against righties in a 'Clash of the Sides'.
Throw in Martina Navratilova and Monica Seles for the women's singles and we're looking real good.
Baseball and football are also hot beds of lefty glory. My all world lefty football XI team includes, oh say, Pele, Johan Cruyff, Bobby Charlton, Ruud Gullit, Mario Kempes, Diego Maradona, Michel Platini, Ferenc Puskas, Romario, Marco Van Basten and Bryan Robson. Sorry John Barnes and Ian Rush.
My baseball top 10 is equally stacked: Babe Ruth, Ted Williams, Ty Cobb, Stan Musial, Barry Bonds, Ken Griffey Jnr, Randy Johnson, Sandy Koufax, Reggie Jackson and Tony Gwynn.
Of course, unless you are Maradona, your hands are merely balance devices in football while in baseball - a two-handed sport - you have to beware of left/right cross-wiring (called cross lateral) where a player may hit left, but actually write and throw right-handed. The same goes for cricket where Chris Gayle bats left and bowls right while classic lefty bat David Gower wrote with his right.
Cricket's an odd one because while an All-World batting line-up could be put together (Allan Border, Brian Lara, Matthew Hayden, Neil Harvey, Dennis Compton, Sir Garfield Sobers and Adam Gilchrist) there, for some strange reason, is a paucity of class lefty bowlers.
I would thought the natural over-the-wicket angle across righthanders would have made them stars but that's not the case. Wasim Akram, Chaminda Vaas, Bruce Reid and Kiwi spinner Daniel Vettori are among the few that have really made a mark at the highest level.
In basketball, Larry Bird, Bill Russell, Dave Cowens, Chris Mullen, Lenny Wilkens, Willis Reed, Bob Lanier and Gail Goodrich are famous lefty alums, but the sport requires ambidextrousness so they kinda don't count.
Of course, there's one sport where we lefties have been really frozen out and that's golf. We are to that game what women are to the Augusta National, an unnecessary nuisance.
I'm a lefty who plays two-handed sports (cricket, golf) right, probably due to conditioning as a child, but spare a thought for the likes of Bob Charles, Phil Mickelson and Mike Weir who won Majors playing on courses designed by righties for righties while standing on the other side of the ball.
Golf is one of the few sports where equipment (clubs and gloves) has to be specifically designed for lefties just so they can take part.
Still, we shall overcome and our numbers are growing. When my grandfather went to school, he was whacked over the knuckles for writing left-handed and was forced to turn right.
That prejudice has gone the way of the Dodo nowadays and with a whopping 13 per cent of the population, watch out because we are about to 'run tings'.
Just check out this, three of the past four U.S. presidents (Ronald Reagan, George Bush Snr and Bill Clinton) were lefties.
I know the first act I'd pass as King of the U.S., the universal banning of damn scissors!
