FROM THE FOREST TO THE FIELD
Tracing the origins of a custom-made Major League Baseball bat,
CARLETON PLACE, ONT. AND LAKELAND, FLA.— When Miguel Cabrera picks up his bat and walks to the plate, he doesn’t think about how his most important piece of equipment came to be.
The two-time American League MVP has never met the man who makes his bats, nor has he seen the factory in a non-descript industrial park outside Ottawa where his finely carved lumber is fashioned. He has no plans to visit. “They make good bats for me,” he said, shrugging. For a hitting savant like Cabrera, that may be enough, but we’re a little more curious.
We wanted to track a major-league bat from the forest to the field, so on a cold, bright day in January we watched Alfred Maione — the director of pro production for the Original Maple Bat Corporation — transform a smooth billet of pristine maple wood into the weapon with which Cabrera will torment opposing pitchers this season.
“The players don’t want to be thinking about their bat at all,” says Arlene Anderson, the company’s president. “That’s our job.” Every major-league bat begins as just another tree in the forest, but exactly which forest is a closely guarded secret. Anderson refuses to say where the company gets its wood. She won’t name any of the company’s suppliers, nor even discuss the general continental region from which their wood is typically purchased.
It’s the only part of the bat-making process she’s unwilling to discuss.
“There’s no magical forest,” she assures me. “But it would be very foolish of me to say where we’re getting our wood.”
Sourcing good wood is the most important part of the bat business and Anderson says if she divulged her suppliers, a competitor could swoop in and buy up the entire stock. There are about 30 different bat makers vying for a piece of the major-league market — once the exclusive domain of Louisville Slugger — and Anderson says she fiercely guards her company’s competitive advantages. But the right wood is only half the battle. “You could buy the most beautiful piece of fabric,” Anderson says.
“Without the right seamstress, it’s nothing.”
Dispensed of the notion we would follow a bat from its woodland origins, we focused instead on the factory floor.
While we may not be able to trace Cabrera’s bat all the way back to the tree, we know the Original Maple Bat Corp. — colloquially known as “Sam Bat” after its founder, Sam Holman — uses wood from rock or sugar maples, a species known to arborists as Acer saccharum.
Major leaguer sluggers share their thoughts on the importance of a quality bat:
“The wood is the most important thing, the quality of the wood.” — Miguel Cabrera, Detroit Tigers
“I know exactly my recipe for my bats, which I consider to be my weapons. I look at it as if I’m a soldier going to war. I need to make sure I know my weapon inside and out. I like certain density, I like certain weight, I like certain weight distribution and I like my handle a certain size and shape and form. Same with the barrel. I can notice the difference when a bat doesn’t feel right just from picking it up.” — Jose Bautista, Blue Jays
“Feel is the biggest thing. I like to use maple bats, I don’t like to use ash. I have certain specs that I use and certain weights. Now it’s at the point, really, where I can pick a bat up and I can tell what I want. I used to use scales to weigh them out, but I don’t need that any more. I can just feel if it’s right.” — Josh Donaldson, Blue Jays Brendan Kennedy