One theory about last season's home run derby staged by Mark McGwire of the St. Louis Cardinals and Sammy Sosa of the Chicago Cubs was that the final total would have been even greater had both men focused from April on maximizing four-baggers.

Armchair analysts worry that batting averages and game scores will fall this year because too many players will be trying to beat McGwire's 70-homer record -- and striking out.

Investors in mutual funds face a similar risk amid the hoopla about the Dow Jones industrial average at 10,000 and the unprecedented four straight years of more than 20 percent returns by the Standard & Poor's 500 index.

Remarkably parallel trends have developed over many decades in professional baseball and professional money management, financial market analyst Peter Bernstein noted in a recent issue of the Financial Analysts Journal. In both cases, players overall have performed ever closer to the averages.

With the major league hitting average fairly stable at .260, fewer hitters than ever are coming close to the magic .400 season average. In the stock market, fewer money managers are able to beat by a significant margin the principal market benchmark, the annual return on the S&P; 500 index.

In baseball, better defense and dilution of talent through more teams have reduced the likelihood of .400 hitters.

In the stock market, more widely available information about stocks and cheaper trading mechanisms have allowed fewer players to score above average.

Moreover, with stock prices at lofty levels, many professional investors have become more concerned about risk and purposefully are avoiding long-shot bets. Striking out is especially lonely and embarrassing in an unprecedented bull market.

While academics and seasoned professionals spurn what they call the "outlyers" on the charts of fund performance, career ambition, performance-based pay and media glamour are powerful forces behind the urge to swing for the fences.

Bernstein's analysis showed that mutual fund managers are more likely than corporate pension fund managers to press their luck, probably because mutual funds are further removed from the customer.

"There is an increasing appetite for risk as the manager groups move away from direct contact with clients," Bernstein said. Investors would be well-advised, he said, to avoid not only funds that consistently fail to at least match market benchmark returns but also funds that appear to be reaching for extraordinary gains.

Paul Becker, chief investment officer for the private asset management group at LaSalle National Bank in Chicago, said he believes that now more than ever investors need to know who is managing their money and what strategy they are pursuing.

"It's much more difficult to get good performance today," he said. "It's a message to investors to be much more aware of who they're hiring to manage their money, not just to buy equities."

Becker notes that the majority of individuals professionally managing financial assets these days have never experienced a significant market downturn.

Becker has two suggestions for investors wishing to avoid the home run hero wannabe who turns out to be a strikeout king.

First, look for mutual funds or other investment programs that emphasize a team approach to decision-making.

Second, individuals need to identify the person closest to themselves who is responsible for handling their retirement money.

For wealthy individuals with large privately managed accounts, the key person may be just a 1phone call away. But individuals investing through employer-sponsored retirement plans, such as 401(k)s, are two or three times removed from the money manager. In that case, you need to know the firm hired by your employer to manage the 401(k) program or the firm sponsoring the program.

"The company hired to provide your 401(k) [is] filling a responsibility to communicate more with participants in terms of risk and reward and objectives and the advantages of the equity fund vs. the bond fund. They are the money manager. Even though they're not managing the mutual funds, they become the clients' money manager," said Becker.