Building a Better Baseball Bat

The Ottawa Citizen

Monday, May 4, 1998

Building a better baseball bat; Sam Holman’s maple bats are a hit with baseball’s sluggers. By Kelly Egan “Mr. Holman… shook up baseball’s establishment this spring when he convinced the tradition-bound league to approve, for the first time since the 1930’s, a bat not made of white ash.” Joe Carter: “I like it a lot… The bat doesn’t split like regular ash does… When you use an ash bat for batting practise, after one day, really, it starts to splinter and split on you and becomes soft. Maple is a much harder wood. It doesn’t dent and it doesn’t splinter. …They’re going to be around for a long time.”