Hardwood Belt trees supply bats for MLB
“The climate of Pennsylvania is different than anywhere else in the world,” said Kevin Gnacinski, chief of production at BWP Bats in Jefferson County, about a two-hour drive north of Pittsburgh. “It grows different, comes up harder, a little bit more dense.”
Uniontown native Jack Marucci, co-founder of Marucci Sports, started to make bats in 2002, when he couldn’t find a wooden bat small enough for his young son. Now, the Louisianabased company is the No. 1 supplier of wooden baseball bats to MLB players, according to Forbes.
When he started making bats, Marucci, the director of athletic training at Louisiana State University, had no idea the best lumber was a drive away from his hometown — and that Mr. Hess’ woodshop class at Laurel Highlands High School would prove to be the most helpful course he ever took.
“Eighth grade woodshop,” he said, “paid off.”
In the dead ball era, baseball bats were made from hickory, but as the game evolved to become more hitter-friendly, batters started to prize bat speed and sought lighter alternatives, Hillerich said. In the 1920s, batmakers turned to ash — the go-to wood for various sporting goods, from lacrosse sticks to water skis — and Hillerich & Bradsby started buying in Pennsylvania in the 1930s.
After buying Larimer & Norton in 1955, the head of Hillerich & Bradsby’s timber operations drove around in a two-door Chevrolet to set up mills in places like Moscow, Pa., and Shandaken, N.Y. In 1970, before aluminum bats came onto the scene, the company’s 11 mills in New York and Pennsylvania were producing 6 million billets (chunks of woodfor baseball bats) every year. Now, it has two mills, both in Pennsylvania.
The bat industry has stayed here ever since, despite various challenges from nature and humankind. The arrival in Cranberry a decade ago of the invasive emerald ash borer, a small green beetle from Asia, has wreaked havoc on the ash population here. In any case, ash has had to make room for other species, particularly as maple’s popularity has grown among MLB players.
“I still think there’s a lot of ash left, but it’s inevitable — eventually, it seems like all the ash is going to be gone,” said Michael Jacobson, professor of forest resources at Penn State. “We just haven’t found a way to control it economically.”
Meanwhile, the lumber industry in Pennsylvania has had to adapt to other threats, as much of the furniture industry has moved abroad and lumber companies and mills have consolidated or shuttered. Pennsylvania has the largest hardwood forest in the country, but the state’s employment continues to recover from the recession; roughly 66,000 people work in the forest products industry now, down from 90,000 in 2000, Bender said.
Nevertheless, America’s pastime remains rooted here. Pennsylvania is home to 10 baseball bat manufacturers, said Jonathan Geyer, hardwoods development coordinator for the Pennsylvania Hardwoods Development Council.
One of them is BWP Bats, a small company whose bats have been swung by players such as Justin Morneau, Johnny Damon and Miguel Sano. BWP’s basement, known as the Bat Cave, is where most of the bat-making process takes place: The bats are sanded, painted, hung to dry, coated, labeled with the company logo and laser-engraved.
To the uninitiated, the Bat Cave has the distinctive smell of chemicals — maybe it’s the polyurethane coating, or the paint. To those who work the shop, it’s just a part of the landscape.
“I don’t even smell it,” vice president Josh Johnson said.
Indeed, even when something’s been around for a while, sometimes you forget it’s there.