Baseball’s Ottawa-Born Maple Wood Revolution

For an eager baseball fan, there’s nothing quite like the crack as bat meets ball. But it’s that sharper crack—and maybe a few splinters flying through your field of view—that signals that a wooden bat has broken in the line of duty.

It’s not an unusual sight to anyone who watches professional baseball, but in the 1990s it was becoming too common for Bill Mackenzie, at that time a scout for the Colorado Rockies organization.1 Bill related his complaints to friend Sam Holman in 1996 over a beer at Ottawa’s now-closed Mayflower Pub on Elgin Street. “Do you think you could come up with an answer to that?”

Holman thought maybe he could. An American transplant to Ottawa and long-time stagehand at Canada’s National Arts Centre, he read up on the physics of baseball and its equipment before fashioning his own bat out of a leftover wooden stair banister in his home.2

The banister was salvaged not only because it was close at hand, but because of the type of wood: maple. Maple trees grow slower than ash trees, then the wood most used for baseball bats. Slower growth makes maple wood’s grain tighter, resulting in a denser, stronger, and stiffer wood.3 On the field that translates to wooden bats that are less prone to splintering or flaking—the method by which many ash bats break.4

Holman took his banister-borne bat for testing to the turnkey ballfield in the east end of Ottawa, then home to the Montreal Expos’ AAA team, the Ottawa Lynx. The bat was an immediate hit.5 Holman soon traveled to Toronto, meeting several Toronto Blue Jays players through mutual contacts. The bat was popular there as well, with Jays legend Joe Carter becoming Holman’s first major-league client. Carter famously snuck a maple bat into a game during the 1997 season, even before it was formally approved for use by major-league baseball for the 1998 season.6

The year 1998 also saw Carter’s departure from the Jays, with the five-time All-Star playing parts of the season in Baltimore and San Francisco before retiring. His Canadian exodus proved to be fortuitous for the maple bat, as Carter extolled the virtues of the heavier, denser maple bat to other players, most importantly Giants teammate Barry Bonds. Ever skeptical, Bonds was not sold until he met Holman and tried the bat during batting practice at spring training in 1999. After a home run-filled session, the outfielder was soon chatting with Holman about sourcing bats directly from the former stagehand turned hobbyist carpenter.7

However you might view Bonds’s 2001 record-setting season of 73 home runs, one thing is certain—he did it with Holman’s maple bats. And while he may have been the most prolific hitter, he wasn’t the only one—by 2001 more than 300 major leaguers were using maple bats.8 Though many sported the recognizable Sam Bat logo and the nickname “Rideau Crusher” (an allusion to the river that bisects Holman’s adopted hometown), most major manufacturers followed Holman’s success and soon produced and sold maple bats.

Though Bonds’s home run hitting may have helped popularize the maple bat with big leaguers, it was not performance-enhancing. Maple bats’ higher density made them harder to splinter, but it also made them heavier. Heavier bats require more muscle to get the same swing velocity, making them ideal for power hitters like Bonds, but they provide no added advantage based on the material alone. “Wood is wood when it comes to hitting performance,” materials engineering Professor Lloyd V. Smith of Washington State University told the Washington Post in 2014.9

While maple bats might not provide extra pop to the ball, they do have an extra pop when they eventually break, leading to a backlash in the mid-2000s. Despite the initial success, maple bats were breaking more often and doing so in violent and dangerous ways. Players and coaches were injured on multiple occasions when hit by sharp or heavy maple splinters. MLB tried to raise this issue during the 2006 collective bargaining negotiations, but the MLBPA was unwilling to seriously discuss any impositions on players’ bat preferences.10

Not satisfied, the MLB Safety and Health Advisory Committee consulted the U.S. Forest Service in 2008 to learn how and why maple bats were breaking. After analyzing more than 2,200 broken bats and video footage over the course of that season, experts determined that the problem stemmed from two issues: the slope of grain in a shattered maple bat not being straight (a common issue in maple wood), and the use by some manufacturers of lighter, low-density maple.11

MLB promptly instituted new regulations that required the straightness of a bat’s grain to be measured during the manufacturing process, and outlawed bats made with low-density maple. From 2009-2013 instances of bats breaking across the league were down more than 50% and have continued to fall since.

The problem was always less of an issue for Sam Bat, who used and continue to use high-density rock maple wood, now the only species of maple approved for use in professional leagues. It wasn’t long before the demand for Holman’s bats exceeded the capacity of his quite literally homegrown business. Sam Bat opened a factory in the early 2000s in Carleton Place, a half-hour’s drive from central Ottawa. Holman sold most of the business to partners in 2008, though he remained involved in the company until a 2021 heart surgery caused him to lessen his public activity.12

Today, Sam Bat estimates that more than 80% of major-league players now use a maple bat, and Sam Bat sells to roughly 100 major leaguers every season. Their reach is global as well; they are the #1 North American brand in Japan’s Nippon Professional League, and the bats are also used in major leagues in Korea, Taiwan, and Mexico.13

From an Ottawa garage to the major leagues and around the world, Sam Holman and Sam Bat changed the bat—and baseball—forever.

CHRISTOPHER SAILUS is a Michigan-born, Canadian public servant and history instructor. He holds an M.A. in British history from Louisiana State University, and his varied research interests include early colonialism, religion during the Reformation era and, of course, baseball and early sport in general. He is based in Ottawa, Ontario, where he lives with his wife, Jennifer, and their two children.

 

Notes

1 “Bill Mackenzie,” Baseball Reference. Accessed May 17, 2024, https://www.baseball-reference.com/bullpen/Bill_MacKenzie.

2 “Sam Bat Was the First Professionally Approved Maple Bat – Accept No Imitations!” Sam Bat – The Original Maple Bat Corporation. Accessed May 15, 2024, https://canada.sambat.com/pages/about-sam-bat.

3 Isabelle Khurshudyan, “Nats have their wood bat preferences, but science suggests there is no difference,” Washington Post, July 25, 2014.

4 Dave Mance III, “Batter Up: Ash or Maple?” The Outside Story, June 18, 2012.

5 “Bonds’ bats Canadian-made,” CBC Sports. Accessed May 16, 2024, https://www.cbc.ca/sports/baseball/bonds-bats-canadian-made-1.296895.

6 Jack Curry, “Why Bonds Will Never Have to Borrow a Bat,” New York Times, July 28, 2007.

7 “Bonds’ bats Canadian-made,” CBC Sports. Accessed May 16, 2024, https://www.cbc.ca/sports/baseball/bonds-bats-canadian-made-1.296895.

8 “Bonds’ bats Canadian-made.”

9 Isabelle Khurshudyan.

10 Jeff Passan, “Baseball at breaking point over maple bats,” Yahoo! Sports, May 9, 2008. https://sports.yahoo.com/jp-maplebats050808.html.

11 “Rate of Shattered Baseball Bats 50 Percent Less, thanks to Major League Baseball and the U.S. Forest Service,” U.S. Department of Agriculture, July 12, 2013.

12 Denis Armstrong, “Sam Holman reinvented baseball with his new bat,” City News Everywhere, October 19, 2022. https://ottawa.citynews.ca/2022/10/19/sam-holman-reinvented-baseball-with-his-new-bat-5970768/.

13 Kevin Rothwell, interview via email, May 16-23, 2024.