MLB sluggers look north for attention
Holman actually introduced maple wood to Major League Baseball nearly 20 years ago, hence the company’s formal name. A friend of Holman’s who worked as a major-league scout was complaining they were breaking too many ash bats — baseball’s preferred wood for more than 100 years. Holman, who had worked as a stagehand at Ottawa’s National Arts Centre, knew maple was denser, harder and more durable.
“I knew I wasn’t going to build a better ash tree,” he says, “so I figured I should try something else.”
Today, three-quarters of the league’s hitters swing maple bats.
Holman used to buy whole logs, which he’d cut and dry himself in a vacuum kiln. He wanted to ensure quality control at every stage. That part of the process has since been outsourced, so when the wood arrives today at the company’s factory it comes in pre-cut rounds, or billets, 36 or 37 inches long, 2.78 inches in diameter and already dried to a moisture level of just eight per cent.
The company buys only the highest quality, veneer-grade wood, specifically targeting a section of the tree at least 10 feet up from the ground where the wood is straightest.
All of the billets weigh between 4.9 and six pounds, but upon their arrival they are re-weighed to the thousandth ounce to afford exact precision.
“The finished weight Miggy likes is 32 ounces,” Maione says of Cabrera’s bat. “That means 32 ounces.”
Not a fraction more. Like a bespoke suit, players expect their bats to be finely tailored to their desired specifications.
This is another way in which Holman changed the game. He was the first to offer the next-level customization — weights measured to the thousandth ounce; fractional tweaks to the handle or barrel — that all players enjoy today.
That’s what first attracted Barry Bonds. Baseball’s career home runs leader was Holman’s highest-profile client in the company’s early days, when Holman was working out of his garage.
Bonds was swinging a Sam Bat in 2001 when he broke the single-season home-run record and in 2007 when he passed Hank Aaron on the all-time list. Prior to that season — his last — Bonds actually gave Holman $40,000 to keep the company afloat. That’s how much he appreciated Holman’s personal touch and attention to detail.
So while the essence of bat-making has remained largely unchanged since the 19th century when players were fashioning their lumber from axe handles, the level of customization and replication is far more sophisticated.
It’s also why the process hasn’t been entirely automated.
“If you were making carbon fibre bats, it would be easy,” Maione says. But since wood is a natural material, no two pieces are exactly the same.
Maione grades each billet by eye to ensure the straightest wood is saved for their professional clients. After the quality of the wood itself, the straightness of the grain is the most important part of the process, both to ensure compliance with MLB regulations and the quality of the bat.
“We read wood,” Holman says. “That’s why we refer to our shelves of wood as ‘The Library.’ ”
Holman’s first client was former Blue Jays slugger Joe Carter, who was so fond of the new maple bats he snuck one into a game in 1997 before they had been officially sanctioned by the league. Carter, who was Bonds’ teammate the following year, told Holman he was on to something.
Holman, meanwhile, used Carter as his first focus group. “It was like having a racecar driver who could tell you what was wrong with your car.”
Carter’s main piece of advice to Holman was to always look for the straightest wood.
“We’ve never stopped,” Holman says.
Armed with an order form from Cabrera, Maione heads to the shelf in the wood library marked 5.400, where each round is exactly 5.4 pounds. He will once again raise the billet to his eye to ensure the straightness of the wood grain and then place it into a wood tracer machine, which has been set up with a template of Cabrera’s model.
With Maione keeping a close eye, the tracer gets to work carving into the chunky cylinder of wood. The narrow blade works from one end to the other and over the course of a couple minutes the bat reveals itself as if it were hiding inside all along.
While the most substantial carving has been mechanized, the finer touches can only be applied by trained hands and eyes. With a pair of calipers, Maione checks the bat’s barrel and handle to make sure they meet Cabrera’s specifications: 2.55 inches in diameter for the barrel and 0.93 inches at the handle. Then he cuts off the extra pieces of wood on either end of the bat and balances it atop a digital scale, which reads 32.3 ounces. “Perfect,” Maione says. He’ll get it down to precisely 32 ounces in the sanding process, while also accounting for the few grams added with paint and varnish. It’s a delicate balancing act. “We try to get the exact weight — to the gram — which is difficult,” Maione says. “But the players appreciate it.” Some players are notorious for constantly making changes to their specifications.
Manny Ramirez, for instance, would call Maione personally at all hours of the day or night asking him to make him a new bat with a little tweak — a few grams taken out of the handle or a slight adjustment to the barrel.
“Every phone call would end the same way,” Maione says. “Manny would say, ‘Make sure to give me the best wood, baby.’ ”
Others, like Cabrera, are less finicky. The 10-time all-star has used the exact same model for the last seven years.
After the bat is smoothed further with a sanding lathe it is passed on to another staff member who conducts an ink-dot test, which since 2009 has been required by Major League Baseball to guard against broken bats.
After Holman introduced maple bats to the big leagues — and especially after Bonds’ success — copycats soon followed and the league was flooded with lesser-quality maple and subpar craftsmanship. The main culprit was the use of wood in which the slope of grain was not straight, a mark of less-durable wood. In response to a rash of breakage, the league mandated that every major-league bat must be tested for the straightness of its wood grains.
The new rules didn’t change Sam Bat’s methods; in fact, the league looked to replicate their process when setting the new standard.
With an eye-dropper, a single dot of ink is dropped onto the bat about 12 inches up from the handle. The ink then follows the wood grains.
“Each of these grains is like a little canal,” Maione says. “So the ink spreads and you get a good visualization.”
With a protractor and a magnifying glass, a staff member ensures the slope of grain diverges no more than three degrees. If it’s more than three degrees, MLB won’t let it on the field. For Maione, that means he has to get to work on another bat.
Of the three bats he’s making for Cabrera today, two pass the ink-dot test, one fails. The one that failed is added to Cabrera’s pile of trophy bats, which are painted just like his gamers but used only for charity auctions and autograph giveaways.
For the bats that pass muster, the next stop is the wheel machine, which smoothes any microscopic scratches. Then it’s off to the paint room, where the bat is painted to the player’s preference. For Cabrera, that means a simple two-tone: nude handle, black barrel.
After drying, the bat is laser-inscribed with the player’s name and model number. A Sam Bat decal is added and another coat of varnish is applied. When dry, the bat is slipped into a plastic sleeve with a silica gel packet to ensure it gains no moisture weight, packaged with five identical bats and shipped off to the player’s spring-training facility.
The next time Maione laid eyes on the bat was earlier this month. He was sitting in the stands at the Tigers’ spring-training ballpark in Lakeland, Fla., as Cabrera used it to club a three-run homer.
“Miggy — 3-run jack!” he texted the Star immediately after the hit.
Maione says seeing his handiwork in action never gets old.
“For one, it’s the closest I’ll ever get to the big leagues,” he says later by phone, laughing.
“It’s still cool, I have to admit. You turn on the TV at night and have a beer and you can see somebody swing one of your bats and you think, ‘I made that.’ ”