Previous studies have reported uneven distributions of birth dates across the year for European athletes in several sports. The usual explanation has been that being born in a particular part of the year confers selective advantages or disadvantages depending on what part of the year the season of the sport in question begins. We now report the first study of season of birth effects in American athletes. We found no such effect in a sample of 167 highly skilled football players or in a sample of 600 baseball players.
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