Most Famous Left-Handed Athletes in History
Lefties. Southpaws. Goofy-footed.
OK, so maybe that last one is exclusive to skateboarders, but left-handed athletes have drawn unique phrases for their preference since just about the dawn of sport.
As less than 10% of the world population uses their left hand dominantly, it's always easy to take notice when a star athlete looks out of the norm.
Some of the greatest athletes of all time, of course, have been left-handed. In fact, the greatest hockey player and the greatest baseball player ever hit and shot lefty. But they're far from the only elites.
Let's take a look at some of the most famous across professional sports history.
Babe Ruth - Baseball
Let's get the obvious two out of the way first. Baseball is, for better or worse, the sport in which handedness most matters. Entire games are predicated on matchups in which the manager selects a player specifically for which hand he bats or throws with.
Ruth did both as a lefty. You really don't need an explanation about his fame or his credentials for this list. Just about every ranking of baseball's greatest players finds Ruth at the top.
He held the Major League Baseball record for home runs for 39 years, won seven World Series titles, and remains the most iconic athlete in American sports history.
Barry Bonds - Baseball
Love him or hate him, Bonds' fame is unquestioned by anyone probably 25 or older.
Allegations tainted Bonds not only during his playing days and have left his legacy as a memory, one that makes a lot of baseball fans uncomfortable and means he won't be quite as remembered as time passes.
But at the peak of his game, Bonds was maybe the most famous athlete on the planet outside of - perhaps - Tiger Woods. He holds MLB's all-time home runs record with 762 and his 2001 through 2004 seasons remain the stuff of legend as he slashed a ridiculous .349/.559/.809.
Over his 22 seasons, Bonds won the Most Valuable Player award seven times while making 14 All-Star Games and winning eight Gold Gloves.
Wayne Gretzky - Ice Hockey
Gretzky's inclusion here is a bit of a technicality. The NHL's all-time leading scorer shot left-handed, qualifying him for this list.
Swinging a baseball bat or a golf club, though, Gretzky was a righty. That's not unusual to anyone whose ever held a hockey stick even at an amateur level. Just like in baseball, the top hand is the dominant one, creating more left-shooting players than you might otherwise think.
There's a reason he's nicknamed "The Great One" as he's on the shortlist as the game's greatest, in fact. In the modern era of the NHL, that's hard to argue.
He's almost 1,000 points ahead of the No. 2 scorer on the NHL's all-time list and his record for goals was only just passed by Alexander Ovechkin.
Bill Russell - Basketball
No player in NBA history has won more championships than Russell, perhaps the greatest center to ever play.
He collected 11 titles in 13 seasons, all with the Boston Celtics. Russell finished top five in Most Valuable Player voting in 11 of those 13 seasons, as well, and won the award five times.
In its list of the greatest 75 players in league history, "The Athletic" named Russell No. 4, behind only Michael Jordan, LeBron James and Kareem Abdul-Jabbar. Abdul-Jabbar, incidentally, is the only player who has taken home more MVP trophies (six).
Steve Young - Football
Handedness in football isn't as relevant as it is many other sports. Quarterback is the only position, really, that handles the ball with just one hand.
Granted, carrying the football, players would usually prefer their dominant hand and arm, but can easily switch to the other when the situation dictates. Quarterbacks can't do that.
Young wasn't the first left-handed star quarterback. That was, probably, Ken Stabler. But the San Francisco 49ers legend became the first lefty slinger to make the Pro Football Hall of Fame when he was enshrined in 2005.
He made seven Pro Bowls and won three Super Bowls during his 15-year career, a career that didn't see him as a regular starter until Year Seven, when he was 31 years old.
Manny Pacquiao - Boxing
If this list included the best left-handed athletes of all-time, Pacquiao probably wouldn't make the boxing slot. Unfortunately, Pernell Whitaker's peak came before cable TV and pay-per-view dominated the sports landscape. Pacquiao, however, hit in their prime.
"PacMan" won world championships at 12 different weight classes in his career. He's the only boxer to ever accomplish such a feat. From 1995 to 2025, Pacquiao carried a record of 62-8-3, even coming out of retirement in June 2025 and fighting for a welterweight belt.
The fight ended in a draw, but Pacquiao impressed enough - and people were interested enough - that he is set to fight Floyd Mayweather Jr. in a rematch in September 2026. Their bout in 2015 remains the most watched boxing pay-per-view in history.
Phil Mickelson - Golf
During the late 1990s into the 2000s, Woods needed a rival. Mickelson served as a perfect foil. Mickelson was a bit more social on the course, countering Woods' locked-in game face appeal.
And while Lefty never quite ranked No. 1 in his career, his 45 wins rank eighth all time and his six major wins rank him in a tie for 12th.
He won his first major in 2004 and won his most recent in 2021, at the age of 50, when he captured the PGA Championship at Kiawah Island, becoming the oldest winner of a major in the sport's history.
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This story was originally published July 11, 2026 at 11:13 AM.