Maple is a staple for Cardinals slugger Ozuna

The bat, gripped by the hitter the Cardinals coveted this winter because of the power he has to transform their lineup, began as a bar bet.

The Mayflower Restaurant and Pub, on Elgin Street in Ottawa, Ontario, closed four years ago after a 35-year run, and it was about halfway through that two patrons had a conversation, over pints, that would change baseball forever. The bat launched that day would popularize maple as baseball material and become the favorite of the game’s greatest hitter at the time, Barry Bonds. It would rewrite rules and history. It would help win MVP awards and home run derbies, and bear the bruises of Miguel Cabrera’s Triple Crown, the first in generations.

And it will have an impact in St. Louis this summer, two years after it found a home in the hands of new Cardinals left fielder Marcell Ozuna.

All because at a pub in Canada’s capital, Bill MacKenzie, a scout, told his friend Sam Holman about an epidemic of splintered bats and offered a challenge.

“You’re a carpenter,” Holman recalls being told. “Do something about this.”

This past Tuesday, at the offices of The Original Maple Bat Corp., Alfred Maione pulled a 37-inch, 2.81-inch diameter wood billet off the shelf. He already had graded the wood and marked its weight, so he knew where to find one at 5.7 pounds. The finished product “has to be certain,” he said later, so the start has to be precise, too. He placed the rock maple on his lathe and began shaping the wood to the specifics of the individual player, right down to the large distinctive flare from handle to knob.

Sanding is done by hand, this time by Jason Purcell, to bring the bat nearer its prescribed 34-inch, 32-ounce specs. Once the bat passes Major League Baseball-mandated tests, the finishing touches are applied. The barrel is kept natural, the handle lacquered black. A black “Sam Bat” logo decal is applied, as always, by Paul Gauvin, Holman’s brother in law. And then this unique model is labeled with its name: the player’s initials and his new number.

“MO23.”

“It is,” Maione says, “a very well-balanced bat.”

“Balance,” Ozuna says, “is very important.”

The Cardinals traded four minor-leaguers to Miami earlier this month for Ozuna, a two-time All-Star who had 37 homers in 2017 and will probably hit cleanup. He added some bat lore to his breakout year when, in May, he asked teammate Ichiro Suzuki if he could use one of his lighter, shorter bats. Ozuna went three for five with a home run, and homered the next game as well with Suzuki’s bat. He returned it on the spot. Two months later, the Brewers protested the amount of pine tar on Ozuna’s bat. He grabbed the nearest bat, Giancarlo Stanton’s, and crushed two home runs in the same game with it.

From his home in the Dominican Republic, Ozuna held an introductory conference call with St. Louis reporters and spoke in Spanish until he was asked about the bat swaps.

“That is a lucky day,” he said, in English. “That was one of those days you wake up too excited and you go to the field and say, ‘Hey, can I use that bat?’ They think a little bit, and say yes. You say, ‘Thank you,’ and you go up to the plate and you get enough to hit a home run.”

Both Stanton and Ozuna use Sam Bats that are similar — Stanton’s “G27” has a deeper cup than Ozuna’s 2017 model “MO13” — and both became fond of Sam Bats after borrowing one from the hitter who made them so popular baseball had to develop regulations.

Bonds gave them their first.

It was similar to one Holman gave him.

After pints with MacKenzie, Holman found information in a book, Robert Adair’s “The Physics of Baseball,” and inspiration in the restoration of his 1904 home.

Holman, now 71, calls himself the “partial historian” of Sam Bat. What he remembers is history, even if it’s “partial.” He had some spare wood left from a maple banister he built for his house, and though a majority of bats were made with ash he knew maple, a denser wood, would work. With whatever he had handy, Holman carved his first bat, holding it between his knees at times for stability. Children tested his bat before he took a few to the Ottawa Lynx, a minor-league affiliate. As home runs started to fly, the manager of the Lynx told Holman he would never get the bat back unless he wrote his name on it.

Holman grabbed a black Sharpie fine point and wrote, “Sam.”

Word of “Sam Bat” and the power of maple spread.

Holman was born in Kansas City, and his grandfathers “sawed” in walnut. His mother, Jacintha George, a native or Raytown, Mo., taught him woodwork, and he made it a career as a stagehand carpenter in Ottawa until the mid-1990s. The bat gave him a puzzle to solve with the tools he had. Holman converted his garage so that he could increase production and “heated Canada for a few years before I got insulation,” he says. He toted bats to Arizona and Florida, staining on the go and driving to spring training “with a car of stinking bats.” He once parked in Pudge Rodriguez’s spot before persuading him to try a bat. Toronto’s Joe Carter got ahold of one and is said to have taken the unsanctioned bat into a major-league game. A year later, in 1998, he joined Bonds in San Francisco and praised the Sam Bat. After giving Holman some preferences, Bonds had his own model, “B1,” and hit 37 homers. In 2001, with an updated model, “2K1,” Bonds hit his record 73 homers. Maple was all the rage.

“Maple is by far the densest and most durable, and you get more pop as well as distance,” says Kyle Drone, founder of Dinger Bats, the Ridgway, Ill.-based manufacturer of bats who has dozens of big leaguers using its maple. “Sam is the pioneer. One repercussion of him bringing maple to market is my company wouldn’t have made it if maple wasn’t an option.”

In 2016, years after he retired, Bonds became Miami’s hitting coach. He took batting practice with his charges, and he offered a few his bat. Ozuna took off with it, even using a model so similar it was branded “2K2.” Ozuna kept the large flare at the end that some hitters find uncomfortable. Ozuna’s goes to a diameter of 2.2 inches, vs. a small flare of 1.97 inches or a broom handle like Ryan Braun has. Ozuna’s barrel dimension is 2.51 inches, down from Bonds’ peak beef of 2.55 inches.

Ozuna’s is one of 400 variations made by Sam Bats.

Not bad from a banister.

Holman’s home restoration remains unfinished.

Maione remembers when he first saw a bat he made in a big-league game. He had stopped at a pub for a pint of Guinness and on the screen was Travis Buck, holding a Sam Bat that had just left Maione’s lathe.

“It’s a rare business when you can make something during the week and on the weekend see it on TV,” says Arlene Anderson, president of Sam Bat. “And see it in the hands of the best in the world.”

“It never gets old,” Maione says.

Before becoming the billet Maione fashioned Ozuna’s “MO23,” the wood started as veneer-grade log, purchased for the height and diameter that reveals quality. The maple is split and then dried in a kiln for a week, and it will be several more before the wood settles and is worthy of being a bat. Sam Bat does not reveal the forest or even region Ozuna’s bat came from, only the expertise of the eyes and hands that put as much into making the bat as Ozuna will using it.

The one Maione held in his hands Friday was a tree as recently as September. He’ll make a total of 12 “MO23,” ready to arrive Feb. 4.

The rest is up to Ozuna.

“I like to listen to the hitters, and this is what I know about hitting,” Holman says. “You find the right wood and you put it on the lathe. If it’s straight grain, you keep going, and if you get it into the right hands and the right player, then you watch it work.”