Manual laterality and hitting performance in Major League Baseball

Asymmetrical hand function was examined in the context of expert sports per formance: hitting in professional baseball. An archival study was conducted to examine the batting performance of all Major League Baseball players fr om 1871 to 1992, focusing on those who batted left (n = 1,059) to neutraliz e the game asymmetry. Among them, left-handers (n = 421) were more likely t o hit with power and to strike out than right-handers (n = 638). One possib le account, based on the idea of hand dominance and an analogy to tennis, i s that batting left involves a double-handed forehand for left-handers and a weaker and more reliable double-handed backhand for right-handers. The re sults are also interpretable in the light of Y. Guiard's (1987) kinematic c hain model of a between-hands asymmetrical division of labor, which provide s a detailed account of why left batting is optimal for left-handers.