Saw this pic of Barry Zito (strumming his pain with his fingers on his sister’s band) on the Sons of Sam Horn game threads and one thing immediately came to mind: why does Barry Zito play the guitar righty? A quick search on Google brought this little trivia nugget:
“I’ve always been ambidextrous,” he shrugs. Barry writes and plays guitar right handed - he only makes a living pitching with his Cy Young award-winning left hand.
(Link)
Cool. Seems like a good way to prevent freak *cough Kevin Brown cough* accidents, doing all the autograph signing and all that with the other hand. Having “taught” myself to be ambidextrous when I broke my hand (I write righty, use a mouse lefty, eat with chopsticks lefty, lift heavy loads lefty, and throw righty although I can throw a freaky junkball pitch with my left hand), I guess I get a kick out of people who are proficient with either hand.
But Bronson Arroyo’s no slouch with the axe either. Here’s Kevin Millar on Bronson:
“He knows 100 songs. You can drink beer, barbeque steaks, and you can tell him to play songs from country, to Metallica, to Creed, to Pearl Jam, to the Dave Matthews band . . . it’s a gift. The kid has a gift.”
Arroyo was good enough for a live appearance at Daddy’s Junky, my favourite Boston music store, on Aug 28. (Daddy’s was where I got all the sound setups for my DJing gigs, and they’ve got awesome, helpful staff. And they’re cheap, too.) Stole that pic above from their pictures of the gig.
What does this all mean? Either the two will strut out simultaneously for a searing G’n’F’n’R-style Izzy-and-Slash duelling-guitar solo… or Bronson will get the W. My money’s on the latter.