Why do they call them southpaws

North has long been thought of as being the direction of heaven, and south the direction of hell. For centuries many people believed that lefties were evil, so this is definitely a plausible explanation. In boxing, a southpaw fighter holds their right hand and foot forward and leads with right hand jabs. They will unleash their most powerful blows with their dominant left hand. The opposite to southpaw stance in boxing is known as orthodox stance, and is an exact mirror image of this pose.

So, left hand and foot forward, and saving the right hand for the more punishing blows. In baseball, a southpaw pitcher is a player who throws with their left hand. A southpaw hitter is a player who swings from left to right. Interestingly, there are no left handed catchers in major league baseball! Check out the video below to find out why. It is generally accepted that the rarity of southpaws gives them an advantage in certain sports , as right handed opponents are generally not used to taking on left handed players.

Studies have found that the advantage gained by southpaw athletes is more pronounced in sports where reaction times are limited, for example in tennis.

That meant left-handed pitchers would have been positioned south in their windup. Everyone from fans to players to broadcasters may use the term. We have a southpaw writer. In the movie Rocky , the title character is a southpaw. The movie Southpaw , starring Jake Gyllenhaal, is about a left-handed fighter from New York who struggles after his wife dies. All people are baseball people! ChangetheGame pic.

He says he has overcome the issue since working with trainer Coldwell but the clash of orthodox versus southpaw can historically present problems. If you're not familiar with the term "southpaw," trying to conjure its meaning might send your imagination all over the place.

The term actually refers to people who are left-handed , and it has been part and parcel of describing the trait since the s. Turns out, we have baseball and boxing to thank for associating southpaw with left-handedness. Perhaps the earliest recorded usage of the word "southpaw" appears in an letter to the editor in The Tickler, a satirical Philadelphia-based newspaper, but it soon became inexorably linked with boxing — although there are differing opinions as to its origins.

An political cartoon illustrates the use of "southpaw" as a term for someone striking a blow with their left hand, in this case a Democratic contender for president, Lewis Cass, uses a southpaw haymaker to knock out both his rival — Zachary Taylor — and Taylor's running mate, Millard Filmore. It is Filmore's caricature, resplendent with a black eye, who said, "Curse the old hoss wot a south paw he has given me!

The association with boxing becomes even stronger as the s progress. An prize-fight in which two boxing opponents have a bare-knuckled battle, is summed up in a New York Herald report that David Woods, who is left-handed, in the ninth round "planted his 'south paw' under [his opponent's] chin, laying him out flat as a pancake.

The term "southpaw" has early origins in baseball too, where it referred to any left-handed player , but especially a left-handed pitcher.

There are claims that the term arose from the way ballparks in the s were built — with home plate to the west, which meant that a left-handed player facing west would be pitching with his "south" paw.