Abstract
Sport-specific human capital is crucial for organizational performance in sport. However, human capital theory posits that athletes’ general training in other sports is also valuable. We examine whether participation in high school track, a generalist sport that emphasizes transferable athletic skills and foundational physical development, rather than narrow specialization, improves professional baseball performance and whether organizations value such training. Hypothesis testing using a 74-year panel of baseball players linked to nearly 100,000 questionnaires shows that track participation improves long-term performance. However, nonfocal specialist sports (i.e., unrelated, coordination-intensive sports) do not. Moreover, additional quantitative and qualitative evidence found no indication that athletes with track backgrounds receive draft or bonus advantages, despite their potential performance benefits. We address endogeneity concerns using coarsened exact matching. Our study also clarifies the mechanisms through which track improves performance.