Maple bats a hit with some players

Zack Minasian, clubhouse manager for the Texas Rangers, has been around baseball clubhouses for a dozen years. If there is a piece of baseball equipment to be sold, Minasian has seen it.

That's why Minasian just kind of snickered when coveralled Sam Holman, founder and chief lathe turner of the Original Maple Bat Company, presented him with a few of his fledgling company's bats.

"I've seen a million of these guys," Minasian said. "They make all kinds of promises, and you take it with a grain of salt. You take the bats. You give them to the players. They sign them and give them away. You just think it's just another fly-by-night operation."

What Minasian and others around baseball have quickly found out is it's not. The tiny Original Maple Bat Co. - known as the SAM Bat - is carving a niche for itself with its rock-hard bats. Players like that the SAM bats last longer than those made of ash, the traditional wood used for baseball bats.

On a lark, Ranger shortstop Royce Clatyon switched to the bat at the All-Star break last year. He ended up hitting 10 home runs, better than in any previous full season, in the second half. He also hit .323. Infielder Luis Alicea switched to them full-time for this season. David Segui, the Rangers' leading hitter, uses two different models depending on which side of the plate he's hitting from. Even Rafael Palmeiro has placed an order.

And the list goes on. San Francisco's Barry Bonds has switched to the SAM Bat. So has Baltimore's Harold Baines and 1999 AL Rookie of the Year Carlos Beltran of Kansas City. Toronto's Carlos Delgado uses them in batting practice.

Since he gave his first bat to Toronto's Joe Carter five years ago, Holman estimates that his client list has grown to about 200 players, some of whom use them only for batting practice.

"Once the players start swinging the bats and see how hard they are and how durable they are," Holman said, "I'm usually forgiven for being such a lousy salesman. The wood kind of speaks for itself."

Five years ago, Sam Holman was working as a craftsman at the National Arts Center in Ottawa, Ontario. One day, during a discussion with an old friend named Bill McKenzie, who scouted Canada for the Colorado Rockies, the subject turned to bats.

Like hundreds of baseball people before him, McKenzie lamented that "we were breaking too many bats." He suggested that since Holman was a carpenter, he try to do something about it.

Holman listened. He looked at the floor. He struck upon an idea.

The floor was made of maple.

Oh, Holman tried something even harder than maple first, but he couldn't get his hands on any dried ironwood. So, he set aside a piece of scrap maple that he had used to build the stair rails in his house and went to the library to research the product.

What he found were that bats were made of two substances: Aluminum and ash wood. Any other potential woods - mahogany, birch and oak - all split far too easily to be considered. Nobody mentioned anything about maple.

The biggest problem with maple had always been its density. The more water a wood retains, the heavier it would be. And because maple was so dense, it was hard to sufficiently dry it. New kilns, however, made it possible to get the wood to a point where a maple bat would weigh about the same as an ash bat of similar specifications. Most major-leaguers use bats that range in weight from 30 to 35 ounces.

A test product in hand, Holman went down to a sandlot in Ottawa to have some high-school players test it. They did nothing. That's when McKenzie stepped in and suggested they let the Ottawa Lynx Class AAA team experiment with it. The players pounded the ball.

The next step was to take the first batch of primitive bats to Toronto and let some genuine major-leaguers swing them. Carter, Delgado and Ed Sprague agreed to be test pilots.

"They were able to hit some balls a long way," Holman said. "I think they knew we were on to something."

Royce Clayton was one of the few Rangers to order a few of the SAM Bats last spring. After a slow first half, he figured he had nothing to lose by switching bats.

He picked up the SAM Bat and took it into batting practice. The ball started jumping off the bat. Afterward, he checked his bat and found the barrel just as pristine as the moment he had picked it up.

He quickly became a convert.

"I was just kind of fooling around with it in batting practice and the ball was just jumping," Clayton said. "It was actually Mark McLemore who convinced me. He said `You've got to take that into the game.' The rest, I guess, is just history."

While Clayton's power numbers have increased significantly since switching to the SAM Bat, it's the durability that he values more.

"I think the more swings you can take with a bat, the more comfortable you get with it," he said. "I remember reading once where Tony Gwynn said the bat should be an extension of your hands. With other bats, you have one set for batting practice and another for games and neither lasts very long. With this bat, you don't worry about it. You can swing the same bat in batting practice and the game. You get to feeling very comfortable with it."

David Segui understands Clayton's feelings. Segui has always tinkered with bats. He was a part owner of another small bat company, KC Slammer, at one time. KC Slammer, like Hoosier, Cooper and Kissimmee Stix, all competed for a share of the market dominated by Louisville Slugger. All still have their advocates.

Segui, a switch-hitter, uses different models from different sides of the plate. He has been known to toss a bat after one bad at-bat. Since he spent part of last year with Toronto and watched Delgado launch rocket shots with the SAM Bat, he has been a company man.

"It's never my fault," Segui joked. "If I have a bad at-bat, it's got to be the bat, right?

"That's how guys are. You want something you feel comfortable and confident with. These bats are much harder, but that's not it. I just feel comfortable taking it up there. It's a good feeling."

That's the feeling Holman is trying to spread across the majors.