The Success of Sinister Right-Handers in Baseball

Abstract

Left-handed people possess less hemispheric lateralization than right-handers,¹ meaning that there is generally less differentiation between the functions of the right and left hemispheres of the brain. In a letter published in the Journal in 1982, McLean and Ciurczak² claimed that in baseball this lack of lateralization provides a relative advantage to batters who both throw and bat left-handed. They found an overrepresentation of left-handed batters in professional baseball, relative to lesser-skilled controls, and higher batting averages among professionals who throw left-handed and bat left-handed than among those who throw right-handed and bat left-handed or those who throw right-handed and bat right-handed ( Table 1 ). However, our reanalysis, 35 years later, shows an oversight that could have supported a very different conclusion.