SAXONBURG — Batter up. Production is up, too.

RLCbats, a wooden bat company owned and operated by Aaron Rekich, has been in its new facility since November.

But Rekich has been making bats for 14 years, beginning with his junior year at Slippery Rock University.

“It’s just been a dream of mine,” said Rekich, a Butler High School graduate, of making baseball bats. “I’ve always loved the game. My interest in baseball came from my grandfather who used to carry (eventual New York Yankee great) Lou Gehrig’s spikes from the hotel to Pullman Park every day when he played here.

“I was always fascinated by those stories.”

Rekich bought a used lathe from eBay and began making bats in his grandfather’s barn. Some of his original clients were Slippery Rock University and Butler, Seneca Valley and Pine-Richland high schools.

Now he has clients all over the world.

“It all started by word of mouth,” he said.

Rekich left the area to accept a teaching and coaching position at Battlefield High School near Manassas, Va., in 2006. He was there through 2011 before returning home. He continued making bats out of his home while in Virginia.

“We turned the basement into a factory,” he said.

Joe Rekich, Aaron’s brother, moved to Virginia with him and was his sales manager. In 2008, Rekich made nearly 9,000 bats.

Joe Rekich soon left the business and is now an air traffic controller in Georgia. Larry Young came on board as sales director last year.

And business is booming again.

“We’re only eight bats short of matching that 2008 total,” Young said. “Aaron isn’t into doing marketing or sales. He just wants to make the bats.”

Aaron Rekich personally handcrafts every bat he sells. While he has more modern equipment now, he estimates he made 10,000 to 20,000 bats from that original lathe.

“I’m still using it, actually,” he said.

He gets his wood — ash and maple — from Pennsylvania, New York and the New England states. He is producing bats for nearly 75 leagues, including four in Arizona, three in Australia, one in Japan and one in Italy.

His seven employees are primarily sales representatives in different regions.

Rekich has been able to pick up international contracts through the annual Freeport International baseball event.

He makes bats for four college teams — including Carnegie Mellon and San Diego State — and has sent bats to Puerto Rico, the Dominican Republic, Brazil, Israel, Germany, Italy, Japan, Australia, Canada and Venezuela.

“On average, I probably do 70 bats a week,” Rekich said. “The busiest time on the calendar is probably now until May 1. Everyone is getting ready for baseball.”

Young recalled a stretch of four days last summer where Rekich worked around the clock.

“Day and night. It was almost non-stop. He was so busy,” Young said. “I don’t think he hit double-digits in hours slept during that stretch. And he loved every minute of it.

“Aaron has a passion for this. He’s a very hard worker, tireless ... He’s a historian in the bat business. He’ll tell you the exact date the first maple bat was ever made.”

Rekich does more than just make baseball bats. He does softball bats, mini-bats, corporate souvenir bats, trophy bats and fungo bats.

He makes bats in multiple colors and designs. And he does special requests.

“The most popular is probably the ‘Wonder Boy’ bat like in the movie (‘The Natural’),” he said. “But I’ve been asked to do dyed bats, pool sticks, billy clubs, tire thumpers, candle stick holders, table legs ... I’ve done them all.”

The best news, he said, is that wooden bats are making a comeback.

“Most high schools use wooden bats for practice, but three states — Connecticut, North Dakota and New Hampshire — use strictly wooden bats for all baseball now,” Rekich said. “New York is using wooden bats for all high school games.”

Rekich pointed out that five years ago he filled orders for three wooden bat tournaments in the region. This year, he is filling orders for 13 such events.

Rekich insists wooden bats are the way to learn how to hit.

“All you have to do is look at Puerto Rico and the Dominican,” he said. “Those kids learn to hit first with broom sticks, whiffle ball bats, then wooden bats — and 15 percent of them go on to play high-level competitive baseball compared to 5 percent of kids in the U.S.

“(Former Pittsburgh Pirate) Neil Walker hit .500 his senior year at Pine-Richland, then .125 his first year in Class A ball. The adjustment to wooden bats is that tough.”

Two major leaguers, Ryan Doumit and Don Kelly, have used RLCbats during the offseason. RLCbats are not officially affiliated with Major League Baseball and cannot be used in big league games.

The company’s goal is to ultimately change that.

“I want my bats in the Major Leagues,” Rekich declared.

In the meantime, he’s more than happy to contribute to the game on a local, national and international scale.

“There’s nothing like the sound of wooden bat against ball,” he said, smiling. “It’s magical.”