And what’s so bad or surprising that things do come out of left field?
Nobody really knows. It almost certainly has been around for far longer than print cites indicate. The first known use was in Billboard magazine, April 24, 1943. The usage was already in its modern form.
Latest twist in radio linked with the war is the exceptional number of quasi-clerical groups and individuals who have come out of left field in recent months and are trying to buy, not promote, radio time.
Most researchers connect it to baseball. The left fielder is usually the weakest of the three outside positions and many stadiums had deep left fields. So a ball sent in by a fielder might have seemed to appeared out of nowhere or be an unusual throw. Use of being in left field for someone who was “out of it” already had cites.
That’s still a weak explanation, but better than folk etymology which claims that an insane asylum was located outside left field and the inmates would escape from it.
I would think that a ‘left fielder’ would need to be a strong player. I think most deep hits go to left field.
But I far from a baseball expert.
Your best and fastest outfielder should be in center field because he can cover the power alleys to either side of him better than his counterparts in left and right.
Agreed, usually the weakest fielders are put in right field because right handed batters most often hit to the left side. All little league players know this.
BTW, I knew the shame of being picked last and put in right field. And yes, the coach specifically told the center fielder to shift over and the first baseman to fall back when a lefty came to the plate. And I was told to stay out of their way.
A strong throw to the plate out of left field can end a game in its tracks, and happens often enough to make it an old time meme.
You are correct. There are about twice as many right-hand batters than left-hand in the majors, and batters generally pull the ball. So there are more balls hit to left field than right field, and it follows that there are more deep hits to left than to right.
You are not alone.
As did Peter, Paul and Mary:
Saturday summers, when I was a kid
We’d run to the schoolyard and here’s what we did
We’d pick out the captains and we’d choose up the teams
It was always a measure of my self esteem'Cause the fastest, the strongest, played shortstop and first
The last ones they picked were the worst
I never needed to ask, it was sealed,
I just took up my place in right field.Playing…
Right field, it’s easy, you know.
You can be awkward and you can be slow
That’s why I’m here in right field
Just watching the dandelions grow
Years back playing softball (REAL softball - 16”!), it went without saying that our fastest, strongest fielder was in left.
Right-handed batters, who will pull to left, were probably a higher percentage of players in the early days than now. (No official statistics, but SABR sneers at official statistics.) As a result older ballparks made left field deeper than right. The Yankees still have the “short porch” in right and Fenway Park needed the Green Monster in left to discourage homers. Check this table of dimensions, with the older parks at top.
Left fielders played deeper. Balls that hit the ground were more likely to be played for singles with the fielder throwing to second to prevent advancement than trying to get the batter at first. Throws to the plate were often heaves from the deep.
These distinction has mostly been lost with modern symmetrical ballparks. And of course there were many great left fielders over time. Look at Ted Williams and Carl Yastrzemski and Jim Rice. But that’s a half century of players in a park that was unusually shallow compared to others of its time. And if you go by fielding percentages rather than great hitters, the 1930s - when the phrase likely first appears - do not produce many familiar names.
I don’t think that modern amateur rules say much about MLB in the first half of the 20th century. Times and conditions changed too much since then.
The OED lists some senses that seem relevant. They seem to be related more to the out-of-center position of left field than anything to do with the players or details of how baseball is played:
NOUN
A position away from the centre of activity or interest, or from the mainstream of prevailing opinion, style, etc. Also (esp. in early use): a position of ignorance, error, or confusion. First citation 1922.
ADJECTIVE
Of a person, work, etc.: unconventional, experimental, or radical. First citation 1951.
Here’s the 1922 citation from a Massachusetts newspaper, earlier than the 1943 one that Exapno Mapcase mentioned. Although it doesn’t specifically use the phrase “came out of left field”, the semantics seem related:
A nine-year-old youth has members of the police department playing out in left field somewhere when it comes to aiding them in finding $18.32 which the boy admits he stole.
The reference to “out of left field” probably has to do with the perception that left-handers* are unnatural and flaky.
*I married one. It has worked out.
I certainly did - I could virtually nap out in deep right field, which was good for me and harmless for my team (ironically, I was the only left-hander in the league (if I remember correctly), which meant that in spite of my poor skills, I was darn confusing for the pitcher, and traitorous to the opposing right-fielder)
As I mentioned earlier, the use of “left field” itself as an anomalous place certainly predates the “come out of left field” usage.
Could this be a stepping stone? Possibly. But there are several preceding phrases that are similar: “came out of the blue,” “came out of nowhere,” “came out of the woodwork.” Someone could have portmanteaued any of those with left field.
In little league, sure. In the majors, the right fielder requires a strong arm (e.g., Roberto Clemente, Reggie Jackson, Ichiro, etc.). You need to be able to throw out a runner heading for third, for instance.
Left field is defensively the weakest outfield position; it’s where you put players who don’t have a strong arm. Lou Brock is a perfect example. He was traded to the Cardinals partly because he couldn’t play anywhere else and was blocked by Billy Williams.
This is purely my intuition, not based on any–you know–fact, but the expression doesn’t seem to me to be baseball related. It really makes no sense in that context. “Left” is the sinister side and “field” is generic.
OED’s earliest evidence for left field is from 1857, in the Spirit of the Times: a chronicle of the turf, agriculture, field sports, literature and the stage.
I can’t find that original, but the paper definitely wrote about baseball in 1857. The term was quickly picked up. Here’s a use from 1860.
Charter Oak were also known for playing at the Carroll Park Grounds, a site “too narrow(
a ball hit to right or left field going in among the crowd who congregate among the sidewalks. (“Putnam vs. Charter Oak,” New York Clipper, July 21, 1860: 108)
I don’t know of anyone who disputes that “left field” originated in baseball, but earlier uses of words keep being found regularly.
The Baseball Dictionary did, in fact, find examples of “out of left field” that are earlier than any above.
The regular appearance of the term in Massachusetts 15 years before it appeared anywhere else would seem to point to the Bay State as the place where the term originated. The mention of the term in the Boston Herald on October 8, 1919, calls it “the latest slang expression,” and its first use in the Lowell Sun, in a non-baseball story, came three days later.
[Ken] Liss speculates that the term originated at Spalding Park in Lowell, which had been used by various minor league teams from 1902 to 1905 and from 1911 to 1916. It was used again (by the Lowell Grays of the New England League) for that one year of 1919, the year the term first appeared. (The ballpark had by then been taken over by the City of Lowell.)
Spalding Park, named for Albert Spalding, had a very short right field, only 276 feet down the line, with a developed area behind it along Village Street. Left field was much deeper, 330 feet down the line, ending in an undeveloped, wooded area beyond the wall that remained undeveloped until the 1990s when it became a parking area for an adjacent auto dealership.
A right handed batter can hit the ball further to left field than he can to right. The bat has more time to accelerate before it makes contact with the ball. The left fielder plays deeper because of this. Everything shifts for a left-handed batter but they are unusual except at today’s professional level.