Sam Holman - Sam Bat Maple Baseball Bat Biography

Over 500 MLB players can't be wrong. Finally given an option over the traditional ash baseball bat Major League players have been gravitating to maple baseball bats and the company that started it all The Original Maple Bat Company that manufactures Sam Bats.

Sam Holman founder and owner of Sam Bats saw his unique bats approved for play in the Major Leagues in 1998. Joe Carter of the two time World Champion Toronto Blue Jays and 5 time American League All-Star, followed by MLB Hall of Fame lock Barry Bonds were two of the early proponents of maple baseball bats and Sam Bats in particular.

Some six years later Sam Bats have become the standard maple wood bat in Major League Baseball and are enjoying an increasing popularity in the minor leagues and high level amateur wood bat leagues.

Dozens of success stories abound regarding the use of Sam Bats. Two in particular; Barry Bonds used a Sam Bat during his record breaking 2001 season when he hit 73 home runs. Albert Pujols used a Sam Bat during his record setting rookie campaign in 2001 winning Rookie of the Year honors with 194 hits, 47 doubles, 37 homeruns, 130 RBI's and a .329 batting average. It seems both Bonds and Pujols have only gotten better with time,they both continue to use Sam Bats to inflict punishment on opposing teams. The only difference now is so do another 500 or so others.

The Sam Bat was pioneered and developed by Sam Holman using his proprietary lathe technology. All Sam Bat timber is of the highest grade Hard Maple available in North America.

Sam Bat wood is chosen from only the top 5% of Prime Hard Maple. Maple is considerably harder than ash and Sam Bats are turned on a proprietary lathe which applies zero pressure to the wood unlike the traditional processes which fatigues the wood. The result is a harder more durable bat which resists dents, chipping and flaking while providing maximum distance. If you can dent a Sam Bat you have an excellent start to a future in the game. No wonder the pros have turned to Sam Bats.

The Sam Bat came about from careful reasearch, a thorough knowledge of eastern hardwoods and a barroom challenge from Holman's friend Bill MacKenzie of the Colorado Rockies who opined one day in February of 1996, "We're just breaking too many bats". Wooden baseball bats, made of Ash. They broke with frustrating regularity at least 72 per player per season. "Do you think you could come up with an answer to that?" MacKenzie asked Holman.

Sam, a long-time wood carver, empathized. He knew his wood. As stagehand for the National Arts Centre for 22 years, he had learned, first hand, wood's properties, characteristics, eccentricities, strengths, drawbacks and beauty. He had also worked with wood as a hobby since he was a boy.

According to Holman the solution was fairly obvious. But the answer led to a pile of work...and a crash course on bats. The reading list ranged from "The Physics of Baseball", "The Rules of Major League Baseball", "219 Patents on Baseball Bats" to "The Trees of Canada, Standard Handbook for Civil Engineers". There was also the search for wood which, for carvers and lovers of wood, of which Holman is one, is never-ending. Then there was the task of translating Maple (a much more dense wood than Ash) into a workable model with the accepted range of bat lengths and weights.

However, sifting through the mountains of information - especially reading 219 U.S. patents - was painfully tedious. Perhaps Sam Bat hadn't been invented because no one had ever had the heart to turn one after this task. In fact, simply going by patent law, Ash would be the only choice.

Living in and near Ottawa was a huge advantage in developing the Sam Bat concept. It's a researcher's dream centre: home of the Canadian patent library, two first-rate universities, the Wood Council, the Canadian Forest Research Centre, the National and other extensive Libraries - all in the centre of the richest deciduous forest of North America.

One thing was sure: Holman was determined to come up with a line of bats that would be more than adequate to deal with the needs of major league baseball. From the beginning, there was no question about Sam Bats' market. His focus was to come up with a standard that would be universal to baseball, starting with the big leagues.

The result is one of the prettiest and yet meanest baseball bats in the world. Just ask some of Major League Baseballs best hitters listed below. Please note this list is by no means all inclusive, rather its a selective list of a few MLB players who have been recognized as some of the best or recent best hitters in the game today who chose to use a Sam Bat.

Moses Alou, Jeff Bagwell, Harold Baines, Carlos Beltran, Adrian Beltre, Barry Bonds, Joe Carter, Frank Catalonotto, Will Clark, Carlos Delgado, Erubiel Durazo, Troy Glaus, Juan Gonzalez, Jose Guillen, Torii Hunter, Jacque Jones, Jeff Kent, Tino Martinez, Paul O'Neil, Magglio Ordonez, Rafael Palmeiro, Albert Pujols, Tim Raines, Gary Sheffield, Ruben Sierra, Miguel Tejada, Frank Thomas, Jose Valentin.

Joe Carter, perhaps summed it up as well as anyone when he told the New York Times: "When you first use them, it's a total different feel from a normal bat . . . I mean totally different. After you use them you don't want to go back.

Is a Sam Bat the right choice for you? Only you can answer that and the only way you can honestly answer the question is to try one. If you are thinking wood bat you can not buy a finer wood bat than a Sam Bat maple baseball bat.