Major league impact
BROOKVILLE, Pa. — One picture tells the story.
As foreman Chris Bietz applies the finishing touches to a baseball bat, a photograph of Minnesota Twins star Justin Morneau is visible on a wall by his work station.
Morneau, the 2006 American League Most Valuable Player and this year's Home Run Derby champion at Yankee Stadium, gets his bats from BWP Bats, a part of Brookville Wood Products.
The 14-employee bat company is off Exit 86 of Interstate 80 East in Jefferson County, less than a two-hour drive from Butler.
"We used to make bats here. Now we handcraft bats here,"Bietz said. "BWPcan also stand for Built With Pride, because that's what we do here.
"Each of the guys working on bats here have either played baseball, coached baseball or are big baseball fans. Nobody in this building just punches a time clock and goes home. That doesn't work here."
<table width="300" height="275" border="0" align="right" valign="top" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0"><tr><td><embed src="/assets/mov/BE5207282.MOV " width="320" height="250" autostart="true" loop="false" ></embed></td></tr><tr><td align="center"><a href="http://www.apple.com/quicktime/" target="_blank"><span class="style11">Requires Quicktime Media Player </a><br><font size="1" face="Tahoma, Times New Roman">Video by Brandon Gerthoffer</font></span><td></tr></table>Even BWP Bats owners Joe and Monica Mitchell are Pittsburgh Pirates season ticket holders.Morneau is one of 20 current major league players who orders his bats from BWP. Johnny Damon of the New York Yankees is another.Bietz watched a recent Yankees game in which Damon homered twice."You could see the BWPlogo on the bat in his hands,"Bietz said. "Watching him hit those homers, I almost went through the roof. My heart beat a little faster. You better believe I was feeling some pride there."More than 300 minor league players are using BWPBats this season.Mike Gregory, vice president of BWP Bats, said the company is the second largest supplier of bats to the minor leagues.BWPBats has the contract for numerous minor league organizations, including the Pirates, Seattle Mariners, Texas Rangers, New York Yankees, Philadelphia Phillies and Chicago White Sox."We send 3,000 bats a year to the Mariners organization, 5,000 bats to the Phillies organization,"Gregory said. "Some teams use more than others."<br></br>
BWP Bats has only existed for seven years. Its parent company, Brookville Wood Products, has been in business more than 42 years, producing furniture squares, stair parts, flooring parts for manufacturers and billets for baseball bat manufacturers.The company decided to research manufacturing its own baseball bats."That's how we got started," Gregory said. "We built 1,200 bats that first year. Now we're making 45,000 bats a year. We have the capacity to make 85,000 bats a year, so we're still growing."Those bats are made out of maple, red oak and ash. The wood comes from trees no more than 150 miles from the BWP Bats manufacturing plant in Brookville."A kid on a Little League team buys a bat from here and likes it. Next thing you know, his whole team is using our bats, then the whole league. ... That's how we grow," Bietz said."Having high-profile guys like Morneau and Damon using our bats doesn't hurt, either."Word-of-mouth also occurs at the major league level. Some of Morneau's teammates in Minnesota — including sluggers Craig Monroe and Joe Mauer — now use BWPBats. A major league player will order 96 bats to begin a season.
Free 15-minute tours of the bat facility are available from 8 a.m. to 4 p.m. Monday through Friday, and 10 a.m. to 4 p.m. Sunday."We give 5,000 to 7,000 tours a year,"Gregory said. "And a lot of the people leave with a bat in their hands."Gregory said 7 percent of the company's bat sales are of the souvenir variety — not a bat to be used in a game, but to be displayed in a case, on a shelf or in a den."They (souvenir bats) have become very popular,"he said. "We've sold some to parents of newborns with the baby's name and birth date engraved on the bat. People buy them for wedding gifts, anniversaries, birthdays, graduations, just about any occasion imaginable."<br></br><br></br><br></br>
Before a bat is shipped out by the company, the quality of wood passes the inspection of up to 14 different people.If the grain on the barrel of the bat isn't straight, or a knot or any other defect is discovered in the wood, the bat becomes part of the souvenir bat inventory."Those bats are for showing, not for swinging,"Gregory cautioned.But BWPBats produces plenty of bats for swinging.Nearly 85 percent of the bats it produces are maple. Bats are crafted for professional, college, high school, Little League and T-ball players, and for youth and adult softball programs.<br></br><br></br><br></br>
Wood billets 37 inches in length are shipped to the BWPBats facility, where it takes five days to complete the bat-crafting process.Each billet is weighed upon arrival and the weight is written on the bottom of each one. The crafting process includes lathing, sanding, painting, applying clear finish and engraving.Everybody here can do every step of the job," employee Joe Zernell said as he worked on "cupping" a bat. Cupping is cutting a small hole — the shape of a cup — into the top of a bat to give it more balance."We produce about 200 bats a day and each one is personally inspected by somebody new every step of the way. There is no margin for error,"Zernell said.Another employee, Steve Jones, said the handle of each bat has to be "absolutely perfect.""The handle is what players are mostly concerned about," he said. "The molding, the trimming, everything is so precise according to specifications."Some professional players, Morneau included, send used bats back to the company to be adjusted."After using the bat, a hitter might notice a way it could be reconfigured to help him,"Gregory said. "He writes down how he wants the bat adjusted and sends it back to us with the bat he used in a game."It's not a criticism of our product. Bats at the pro level are very personalized. This is how these guys make their livelihood and they're always looking for an edge. We try to give it to them."Regardless of who orders a bat, the five-day completion time is an absolute."There is necessary drying time for paint and finish,"Gregory said. "We won't package a bat early. You can make a bat or you can make a bat right."Gregory said a player can order 50 bats and have them in a week's time.
While professional players are only permitted to use black, brown or natural-colored bats, amateurs can be much more creative."Some teams order bats colored to match their uniforms,"Gregory said. "Some players just like to use their favorite color."Whatever color, size or weight, BWPBats are shipped across the globe. Baseball organizations in all 50 states use the bats, as do teams in Canada, Mexico, the Caribbean, Japan and Taiwan."Wherever there's baseball, we exist,"Gregory said.While about 200 companies produce baseball bats nationwide, only 30 produce bats for professional players.<br></br><br></br>
Major League Baseball is dealing with the issue of maple bats breaking with alarming regularity this season — an issue Gregory claims has created undue criticism of maple wood."The misconception is that maple breaks easier," he said. "Maple is actually a denser, heavier wood and that's why hitters like it. The problem is with the thin bat handles."Major League Baseball is looking at maybe increasing the handle size and lessening the weight differential to prevent the bats from snapping off."Even if maple bats were taken out of the (pro) game — which is very unlikely — we would simply shift our focus to ash and red oak bats,"Gregory added.Baseball in general is beginning to shift its focus from aluminum bats back to wood."I played high school baseball and had no idea that hitting with wood makes you a better player,"Gregory said. "The sweet spot on a wooden bat is much smaller than on an aluminum bat. So if you practice with wood, you learn to make more precise contact."Play a 5-4 or 3-2 game in two hours with wood, or a 17-11 game in three-plus hours with aluminum ... Wooden bats level the playing field."And keep BWP Bats in business."A lot more goes into making a baseball bat than people realize,"Bietz said.
BWP Bats in Brookville handcrafts about 45,000 baseball and softball bats per year.The following step-by-step process can be witnessed during free 15-minute tours:<b>Step 1</b>Wooden billets 37 inches long are received from the Brookville Wood Products mill a mile down the road. The majority of wood produced at the mill comes from within 150 miles of the facility.<b>Step 2</b>Billets are turned on copy lathes, featuring a small "finger" that follows the contour of the bat being duplicated, allowing the lathe and knives on the machine to produce a copy of the desired bat size and weight.<b>Step 3</b>Bats are placed on an end sander, sanding the ends of the bat where the excess wood was removed.<b>Step 4</b>The barrel of the bat is sanded slightly, smoothing it a little more.<b>Step 5</b>Bats go to a "Nash"sander, which can sand up to 10 bats in a rotation. Bats are sanded with a heavier grit of sandpaper, which smoothes them to an almost glasslike finish.<b>Step 6</b>Bats are hand-dipped in water-based paints and stains, with 20 colors available.<b>Step 7</b>Once the primary coat of paint or stain has dried, bats are dipped three times in a clear finish.<b>Step 8</b>Once dry, bats are taken to the pad printer, a machine that applies the BWPlogo in a painted form. The logo, which dries within seconds, is placed on the weaker side of the bat.<b>Step 9</b>Lines are painted on the bat by hand. Once dry, the bats are placed on the shelf as stock.<b>Step 10</b>Once purchased, bats may also be cupped by request. The process involves cutting a small hole — the shape of a cup — into the end of the barrel to lighten the weight of the bat by an ounce and strengthen the sweet spot. They are also engraved with the model number and any other personal engravings the customer may want.
