ELMSFORD - Eating?

Left-handed.

Hair brushing?

Right-handed.

Tennis?

Left-handed.

Batting?

Right-handed.

Writing?

Left-handed.

Pitching?

Well, that depends.

Alexander Hamilton's Tyler Field is the exception to the rule in baseball.

He's an ambidextrous pitcher. 

Only a handful of men in the history of Major League Baseball could say the same.

No one — at least in the recent history of Section 1 high school baseball — pitched both ways. 

It wasn’t until after the natural righty Field started monkeying around during backyard ballgames that he could also call himself a southpaw pitcher. Throwing from the left side was first designed to best brothers Corey and Kyle.

“Originally, it gave me a huge advantage over my brothers in Wiffle Ball,” Field said.

Now, probably a good few thousand lefty pitches later with real baseballs, Field hopes his ability to pitch from both sides leads to success in Section 1 and beyond.

83 pitches

The 15-year-old freshman got his second varsity start Monday against Irvington.

It wasn’t quite what he had in mind.

He was lifted after throwing 83 pitches over just 2 2/3 innings.

He yielded 11 hits, walked four and balked home a run. His day ended when he plunked two straight batters with the bases loaded.

Fourteen runs might engender a “Yikes!” But Hamilton’s porous defense didn’t help things. Only five runs Field yielded were earned.

And while Field later talked quietly about nothing working from the right side, he struck out two batters throwing righty and two lefty, the switch being made after Irvington built a 6-1 lead with none out in the second inning.

For all the hits (some seeing-eye, one a bloop but also three long triples), Irvington coach Mike DiNardo was impressed.

“The fact he throws and accurately (from both sides) and can actually do it in a game is quite an accomplishment,” said DiNardo, whose team ultimately won 16-3 in a game shortened to four-and-a-half innings by the 10-run mercy rule.

“It was cool to face him — to actually see it,” said DiNardo, who wasn’t surprised when Field switched gloves, since he’d read on social media about Hamilton having a two-way pitcher.

Out-foxing the hitter

Field isn’t about to overpower anyone.

After all, he’s just a freshman. While his righty-pitching brother, Corey, a senior who played short Monday, is close to 6 feet, Tyler is 5-foot-6.

But there’s more to pitching than blowing people away. There’s a lot of thinking — out-foxing the hitter.

And even just switching arms can get in the opposition’s head.

“It’s more fun to pitch left,” Field said. “It catches a lot of hitters by surprise. The look on their face is priceless.”

“A lot of times a guy says, ‘New pitcher.’ Then another says, ‘No, it’s not.’ "

The most amazing part of the story, though, is how quickly Tyler taught himself to throw lefty.

'Works like a madman'

Three Christmases ago he asked for a glove for his right hand. His dad, Brian, who's president of the Elmsford Little League and Hamilton's assistant coach (as well as a currently-hobbled Westchester Rockland Wood Bat League player) threw in a sturdy pitch-back.

Then he saw just how much being a two-way pitcher meant to his middle son, who, not long before that, had trouble reaching the plate throwing righty.

“He was in the snow with the pitch-back every day, working from both sides,” Brian said. “It would be dark, rainy, 20 degrees. He didn’t care.”

“He’s scrawny but he has a pit bull mentality,” his dad said. “He works like a madman on it.”

Tyler, who pitched only from the right side while playing modified baseball as a seventh-grader, became confident enough in his southpaw abilities last spring to begin switching during modified games.

In his first outing throwing both ways, he picked up the win, striking out seven over four innings from the right side before going southpaw for two innings and K’ing another five.

Friends have tried to duplicate what he does but with zero success.

“Pretty much everybody I catch with tries to do it. It never works out,” Field said. “A lot of people don’t have the time (to practice).”

Hamilton’s catcher, Alfonso Garcia, a senior, noted what a rare feat throwing both ways is.

“It’s not easy. I can’t and I was born lefty. I tried to do it. I can’t,” he said.

Garcia thinks his young hurler, who, he said, had a two-seam fastball working from both sides, as well as a curve from the left side, will improve. He already likes the movement he gets on the ball.

'He's going to be an asset'

Ideally, Field, who pitched both ways last fall in the Elmsford Little League’s 13- and 14-year-old Junior division, would be pitching for a freshman or junior varsity team this season, instead of facing some kids three years older and more than half a foot taller. But Hamilton has no freshmen or junior varsity baseball program.

“In our world, he has to be up on varsity,” Hamilton’s nine-year head varsity coach Bill Dwyer said after Monday’s game.

Dwyer wasn’t upset with what happened Monday — far from it.

He said Field initially pitched with a little too much adrenaline, over-throwing from the right side. After switching to southpaw, he said he had a “little more intensity and anger.”

“I told him the same thing happened to Corey (when he was a freshman),” he said.

He said Field will come to understand “the pitch he got a travel kid out on he will not be able to get an 18-year-old out on.”

“But, freshman or not, he’s going to be an asset to our program,” he said, explaining Field has tried doing everything he has been asked to do.

“The result (today) doesn’t show it but I couldn’t be happier with what he’s doing this year,” Dwyer said.

"I hope he sticks with it,” DiNardo added.

Twitter: @HaggertyNancy