Famous southpaws | Bandera

Famous southpaws

Henry Liao |April 17,2014
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Famous southpaws

Henry Liao - April 17, 2014 - 03:00 AM

LEFT-HANDED people are a special breed. While they concededly are in the minority, some of them went on to become distinguished men and women in different fields of endeavour.

There have been seven southpaw United States presidents in the past, including the late actor-politician Ronald Reagan, George Herbert Walker Bush (the father of current president Barack Obama’s predecessor George Walker Bush) and William Jefferson (Bill) Clinton.

Locally, we had a left-handed chief executive in Joseph (Erap) Estrada.Lefty foreign celebrities who have made it bid in the entertainment world include (without regard to billing), actors Tom Cruise, Brad Pitt, Bruce Willis, Sylvester Stallone, Robert De Niro, Morgan Freeman, Pierce Brosnan and Robert Redford and actresses Nicole Kidman, Angeline Jolie, Demi Moore, Whoopie Goldberg, Diane Keaton, Kim Basinger and Julia Roberts and the highest-paid television talk show host Oprah Winfrey.

In the music industry, there’s 71-year-old (James) Paul McCartney of the iconic Beatles and later the Wings who still plays the guitar with strings in reverse order.

If you are a Baby Boomer (like this Hoopster), I am sure you would remember Phil and Don Everly or better known as The Everly Brothers.  Lefties both are.

Now, we turn to some of the well-known left-handed international athletes in the past and present. U.S. major league baseball’s renowned homerun hitters Baby Ruth and Barry Bonds were southpaws.

Great left-handed boxers include the likes of “Marvelous” Marvin Hagler, Oscar De La Hoya and, of course, our very own 35-year-old Pambansang Kamao, Emmanuel (Manny) Pacquiao.

Last April 12 at the MGM Grand Garden in Las Vegas (USA), the world record-setting eight-division titlist avenged his controversial June 9, 2012 split-decision defeat to Timothy Ray (Tim) Bradley with an easy unanimous decision over the previously unblemished American boxer (in 33 fights, 31-1-1) and regained his World Boxing Organization (WBO) welterweight title.

Swimming produced a lefty Olympic hero in American Mark Spitz.Among the greatest athletes ever to pick up a tennis racket were southpaw Jimmy Connors, Rod Laver, John McEnroe and Monica Seles.

The all-time greatest bowler in the world happens to be a Filipino and a left-hander as well.Rafael (Paeng) Nepomuceno was a six-time World Bowling champion and topped the  World Cup of Bowling an unprecedented four times in three different decades (1976, 1980, 1992 and 1996).

The 57-year-old Nepomuceno was the youngest ever to win the World Cup at age 19.

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