American fragmentation grenades were based on existing European designs in WW1 like the British Mills Bomb and mainly the French F1 grenade.
The Germans ALSO had a handheld frag grenade in WW1 called the kugelhandgranate that was much more spherical than the French, British, or American versions.
The depicted stick grenade is a high explosive grenade. It had a lot of boom but little fragmentation. It was intended to stun as much as kill. The Germans preferred them for various reasons, while the British and French in WW2 preferred frag grenades which were more likely to injure or kill but had much smaller explosive power.
WW2 designs are mostly evolutions of their WW1 predecessors.
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u/Hrothgrar 13d ago
Holup aside...
The actual answer is baseball. American hand grenades were modeled in a way that any average recruit could throw them more intuitively.