It was a Saturday in Houston, and a small girl with a robotic hand was walking onto the field to throw a pitch in front of thousands of cheering fans packed into Minute Maid Park.
Hailey Dawson, a 7-year-old girl born who was born with a rare disease called Poland Syndrome that causes birth defects in one out of every 200,000 births, stood halfway between the pitcher’s mound and home plate, a few feet from Houston Astros second baseman José Altuve, and lobbed a ball with a 3D-printed hand that was designed by researchers at UNLV and printed by Stratasys 3D.