It's baseball history. While modern parks are mostly symetrical, older parks were not. At one time teams had to build parks on whatever land they could find and nice symetrical parks didn't always fit. Given an asymetrical park, a short fence in right was usually favored since practically all early players only had pull power and the vast majority hit right handed.
This become easier to visualize if you ever played ball in a rectangular lot. Given such a lot, home is positioned in a corner with a minor and major edge defining the foul lines. The major edge extending from home normally defines the thirdbase line and extends to the LF foul line. The minor edge extends past first to define the right field foul line. The corner oposite home is then cut off with a fence (or fences) that extend to the power alleys. This also shows why centerfield is the deepest part of most parks even though most players can generate the most power by pulling the ball to nearly straight or right field.