Journey for some big league bats begins in Brookville

Philosophers have been contemplating the question for ages but said tree will definitely make a sound after being cut, dried, checked for defects, lathed, sanded, painted lacquered and swung by Minnesota Twins first baseman Justin Morneau as he connects with a baseball and sends it to the fence in a Major League ball yard.

Morneau, as well as Major League Baseball stars Johnny Damon, Manny Ramirez, Robinson Caneau, et al, use pieces of lumber produced at BWP bats located just outside of Brookville.

“All together, we have 20 Major League guys and over 200 minor league players who use our bats,” said BWP Bats vice-president Mike Gregory. “Twelve organizations purchase our bats and use them in bulk. The Pirates and Phillies purchase our bats and use them in their minor league system.”

Last season, Morneau used a BWP bat when he clobbered the competition to take the Home Run Derby contest during the All-Star Game festivities in Yankee Stadium.

BWP bats has been producing maple bats for the past nine years. The company is an outgrowth of Brookville Wood Products which decided to start producing baseball bats when the market for furniture and flooring products took a tumble in the early 2000s.

Hard rock maple bats are the company’s signature product with 80 percent of the bats being of the maple variety.

The bat making process begins in the forest. The trees are felled and brought to the sawmill of Brookville Wood Products where the logs are sawed down to make lumber for furniture, flooring, etc. while the choice pieces of lumber are cut into splits around 40-inches in length.

The splits are dried and the best pieces transferred to an automatic lathe that makes them into round cylinders called billets. The billet is then dried and weighed to make sure it will meet the weight specifications for Major League Baseball. The billet is also inspected for grain quality.

After the billet passes all quality tests, the actual bat making process begins and it starts with a computer.

The specifications for the size of the prospective bat are fed into the computer which transmits the information to the company’s automatic lathe where it is shaved. From there the scrap ends are cut off with a chop saw and the bat is weighed again.

Once a bat meets specifications after the lathing process, it is shipped downstairs in the two-story facility where it is sanded, painted and lacquered.

Some bats destined for the Major League level are then hollowed out at the end to make the bat lighter which makes the swing speed faster.

Starting this year, due to safety concerns about maple bats, the grain near the handle has to be inspected and can not have more than a three percent deviation in its width.

The extra testing is in reaction to incidents which occurred last season involving maple bats.

Pittsburgh Pirates third base coach Don Long and a female fan at a Los Angeles Dodgers game were injured by the debris from broken maple bats.

Major League Baseball commissioned testing of the maple bats over the off-season and a few new rules were added in the production of maple bats to ensure the safety of fans and players.

Even though there are more requirements in producing a Major League bat this season, Gregory doesn’t see a problem with it.

“On our pro bats we have to make two more phases of production and that is in selection,” said Gregory. “The slope of grain restriction they have implemented this year, to be honest with you, didn’t affect us a whole lot, it just cut out a percentage of the wood we can use but we’re in favor of what (Major League Baseball) is doing there.

“We saw our logs with straight-grain anyway, so it doesn’t really affect us.”

Beyond maple bats, the company also produces ash and red oak bats. Ash has been the dominant species in the bat-making game for many years and most of the ash for bats comes from Pennsylvania However, the ash bat may become a thing of the past due to an insect infestation in Pennsylvania .

The Emerald Ash Borer is a legitimate threat to stands of ash across the state and may have an effect on the ash bat industry.

The red oak bat is new to the industry.

Gregory claims the only thing holding up red oak bats being used in the Majors is players have to get used to the feel of the bat.

According to Gregory, the red oak bat falls between the ash and maple bats with ash being softer and maple being harder.

Gregory said Pittsburgh Pirates first baseman Adam LaRoche was testing the red oak bat and might start using it.

“Oak is a little different than your maple and your ash due to the pore structure,” said Gregory. “We’ve done some things in our testing over the past eight years to get it right. A lot of guys use ash over maple because of the feel of ash versus maple and red oak falls in between. The problem with those pores I speak of is sometimes you get vibration and we’ve done some things with the finish to help with that.

“What we’re doing this season is to try to get (the red oak bat) out to different players so they can test it.”

The BWP Bats factory employs nine workers and has grown from making around 1,200 bats per year to over 40,000 bats a year.

Even though BWP’s production doesn’t rival that of Louisville Slugger or Rawlings, Gregory is happy with where his company at right now but doesn’t count out his company someday competing with the “big boys.”

“With the drying capacity we have at the mill and the capacities we have, we could rival Rawlings or Louisville ,” said Gregory. “We fulfill a niche in the market and to say that’s where we want to be forever, no, we’d like to grow to that point so we’ll take it year by year.”

Beyond the professional level, BWP Bats produces bats for all ages as well commemorative bats which are not for use on the baseball diamond.