News Archive
1997
The Toronto Star
www.thestar.comSaturday, March 29, 1997
Firm’s hoping for a real home run with tougher bat; Betting on rock maple instead of traditional ash - By Kelly Egan
“It began with a question at an Ottawa pub in the spring of 1996, from a baseball scout to a wood-smith: Why can’t they make a baseball bat that’s won’t break? Ottawa resident Sam Holman… set out to smack an engineering curveball.”
Sam Holman: “If you’re going to solve a problem that’s existed for 100 years, you have to come up with a different solution.”
“Breaking into the big leagues will not be easy, particularly since baseball is a sport that takes its traditions seriously. …about a dozen bat makers have been approved by major league baseball, and all use ash."
1998
The Globe and Mail (Canadian)
March 31, 1998Bat maker makes it big – By Dave Chan
“Though the bat hadn’t been sanctioned [Joe] Carter took [one of the test sample bats] with him to the plate in a road game at Kansas City. The Kansas City catcher and the umpire behind the plate both remarked on the slim line of the unapproved bat. They also noticed that Mr. Carter put a pitch over the wall for a home run.”
“The advent of Mr. Holman’s maple bat, called the Sam Bat, is considered significant enough that baseball’s Hall of Fame in Cooperstown, N.Y., has acquired one as a historical artifact.”
“…ash bats quickly become dented and chipped and often they break… The maple bat, being denser, can put the same mass into a swing with a thinner profile, allowing the bat to travel faster. Contact is made with a harder surface.”
Sam Holman: “Sammy Sosa (who was testing the bats in spring training) hit a broken bat home run. I don’t think that’s ever been done with an ash bat.”
“ Last year in batting practice, some guys used them for three months without fraying at all.”
Canadian Workshop
April 1998Ottawa’s Very Own Bat Man By Robert Koci
“Bats are pretty simple until you make thousands of them,” says Holman. “That’s where the details and complexities of bat design begin to absorb you.”
“The label is always placed over the flat grain. That way, when the batter holds the bat with the label toward his body, he knows he will make contact with the ball on a tight grain and generate more drive. Holman tells his hitters to “look into the eyes of the bat.”
The Ottawa Sun
Thursday, April 30, 1998The Batman Cometh; Sam Holman’s unlikely marriage of maple and baseball could revolutionize the grand old game. By Mike Gibb
“Dressed in shabby overalls and wearing reading glasses, Sam Holman carries nothing with him that would indicate he is on the edge of a baseball revolution.”
“… Sam Holman has created the longest-lasting wood bat in baseball history.”
“Maple is also used for pool cues, bowling pins and light airplane propellers. Holman kiln dries the wood, so there is no moisture to weigh it down… “I knew I had to put maple on a diet,” he said.”
“The average life expectancy of an ash bat is one day. Holman’s bats last, on average a month, though that depends solely on the person using them. But maple bats do not chip or crack as easily as ash.”
“I’ve seen Canseco tenderize a ball just as far with ash,” Holman said. “But the key with the maple bat is consistency. That’s what players are looking for.”
“Ripken was an easy convert – though a sceptical one. He agreed to try the bat during spring training, telling Holman that is he didn’t hit a home run, he wouldn’t order any. After just two pitches with his new lumber, Ripken had launched a moon-shot that landed 45 feet beyond the outfield fence.”
“…How unlikely was this…? Holman, who grew up in South Dakota, says he was as far removed from baseball as a young American boy could be. And maple? “We only saw maple trees on post cards,” he said.”
The Ottawa Citizen
Monday, May 4, 1998Building 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.”
The New York Times
Friday, June 19, 1998A Bid to Build a Better Bat Uses Maple to Battle the Traditional Ash
Need Good Wood? A Batmaker Tries Maple; Sam Holman makes maple bats for major leaguers. - By Jack Curry
“Joe Carter was standing behind the plate… sermonizing about his bat. How it allowed him to whip through the strike zone faster and how other major leaguers will ultimately want one.”
“Carter, bat evangelist as well as a member of the Orioles, at last persuaded Pat Borders of the Cleveland Indians – formerly his teammate in Toronto – to take a swing. Borders swung the bat once, twice, three times and then nodded his acceptance. Carter cackled with knowing approval…”
Carter: “When you first use them, it’s a totally different feel from a normal bat. I mean totally different. After you use them, you don’t want to go back.”
Sam Holman: “I couldn’t make a better ash tree, and I knew there was more than one way to make a bat.”
The Toronto Star – The Saturday Star
www.thestar.comJune 27, 1998
Canseco regains his power with the new bat – By Jim Proudfoot
“ The Sam Bat was approved by baseball headquarters for 1998 and Jose Canseco gives it a share of the credit for the restoration of his long lost power.”
Canseco: “This is a harder wood. The ball travels further off of it. … The old bat dents when you make good contact, which means energy is being absorbed and you can feel it vibrate when you connect. With the Sam Bat, more of the power I generate is transferred to the ball. So it Carries better.”
1999
The National Post (Canadian)
October 1999Bat Man By Alex Gillis
“…maple had the potential to become the Excalibur of bats.”
“Most of the amazed players [from the Ottawa Lynx triple A team, testing the first prototype of the Sam Bat]... used one seemingly unbreakable bat for and entire two months of bating practice.”
U.S. News and World Report
November 1, 1999Will the World Series be win by a Sam Bat? By Marci McDonald
“Holman went straight to the public library and checked out The Physics of Baseball. After months of studying bat patents, including the earliest ones for Louisville Slugger, he had reached one conclusion: He would have to find a wood that would take more punishment than ash.”
“But it was a 1997 trip to a Toronto Blue Jays batting practice, arranged by another friend, that put the Sam Bat into major-league play…Joe Carter hit a homer on the first try. Later, Carter sneaked the still unsanctioned bat into a game against the Milwaukee Brewers and once again homered, providing an instant public-relations boost.”
2000
The Dallas Morning News
dallasnews.com
May 3, 2000
Bat Man; Maple bats from small company a hit with players
– By Evan Grant
“ Rangers clubhouse manager Zack Minasian 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 …of the Original Maple Bat Corporation presented him with a few of his fledgling company’s bats. “I’ve seen a million of these guys… You 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…”
“[In 1995], 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. …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 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.”
“ …[Holman] let the Ottawa Lynx Class AAA team experiment with it. The Players pounded the ball.”
“ After a slow first half, [Royce Clayton] 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. Afterwards, he checked his bat and found the barrel just as pristine as the moment he had picked it up.”
Sam Holman: “Once the players start swinging the bats and see how hard and how durable they are… the wood kind of speaks for itself.”
The New York Times
Tuesday, August 29, 2000Hill’s Power Supply is Made of Maple By Buster Olney
“After Glenallen Hill slugged one of the 12 homers he has hit in 81 at-bats since being traded to the Yankees, one of his teammates inspected his bat out of curiosity. What the teammate did not see surprised him: the surface of the bat appeared virtually unscathed. There were no real marks, only a couple of almost unnoticeable indentations.
The barrels of most well-worn bats are covered with spots and scrapes from contact. But then, most bats are not like the kind used by Hill”.
The Star-Ledger The Newspaper for New Jersey
Friday, September 22, 2000
Yankees: SamBats are good wood for long flies By Dan Graziano
“Glenallen Hill, just arrived via trade from th Chicago Cubs, picked [a new Sam Bat] up and tried it. He liked it. He used it to hit his 10 home runs in August and be named American League Player of the Month.”
“…once [major league players] discovered the bats delivered on their promise – not a crack or break or dent the way the old ones did – it was just a matter of feel.”
2001
Report News Magazine – National Edition (Canadian)
www.report.caNovember 5, 2001
Canadian bats in baseball’s belfry – By Colby Cosh
“When Barry Bonds broke the single-season home-run record this fall, he was wielding a bat made in an Ottawa basement.”
“- more astonishing even than the superhuman achievements of Babe Ruth, Ted Williams and Mickey Mantle. Most people already know that [Barry Bonds] hit 73 home runs during the season, which is more than anyone has hit, ever, in pro baseball.”
“Barry Bonds and about 300 other big-leaguers use bats made by Sam Holman’s Original Maple Bat Co. in Ottawa. Mr. Holman’s SamBats have, entirely without fanfare, wrought a made-in-Canada revolution…”
“What is amazing is that Mr. Holman, 56, has achieved this market penetration just five years after making his first “Rideau Crusher” prototype. His bats are made of maple, not ash… Few other major innovations in baseball have been adopted so quickly, or against greater odds.”
“But if you talk to old-time woodturners, they’ll tell you in the same breath that maple is unpredictable, but that it’s the strongest wood there is. …[Mr. Holman] knew that maple had gotten a bad rap in the folk-lore, that it had a higher specific hardness than ash, and that kiln-drying techniques had improved enormously in the last quarter century.”
“ …the bats last longer and, more importantly, their durability gives hitters a tremendous advantage in dealing with pitches on the inside of the strike zone.”
2002
The Ottawa Citizen
Sunday, January 27, 2002Bonds goes to bat for Holman; Major league bseball’s home run king visits Ottawa batmaker Sam Holman to deliver some personal payback. By Kelly Egan
“Sam Holman… was near tears in briefly reviewing the success of his company, The Original Maple Bat Corporation. “Baseball may not know what to do with me, but Barry Bonds certainly does.”
“[Barry Bonds] visited the Gatineau mill where the maple was cut, Holman’s house on Bayswater Avenue and the Rochester Street plant…. Known for his mercurial personality, Bonds was consistently charming yesterday. He sounded genuinely awed at the humble surroundings that Holman began in: a shed at the rear of his house.”
The Ottawa Sun
January 27, 2002Sam’s bats turn Bonds into ‘superman’ By Todd Saelhof
“It was Holman’s now famous maple wood bats that Bonds used to leave his single-season home-run mark on baseball history.”
“…Bonds, whose 73 home-run season with the San Francisco Giants set a new major league standard. “Sam wants to give me the credit. But it took both of us to do it. I give thanks to God for my ability, and I give thanks to Sam for producing something that give me a lot of confidence.”
“The difference is [such mass manufacturers as Rawlings or Loisville] try to satisfy the client on a model of bat,” Bonds said. “Sam tries to satisfy the client with the performance of a bat. His are custom made.”
2004
The Globe and Mail
Wednesday, December 1, 2004Entrepreneur fashions baseball bat for a big leaguer and his dad By David Naylor
“From his humble beginnings working out of his garage, Sam Holman has made bats for many of the biggest names in baseball.
But last week he got the call to make one for a much bigger hitter.
Mr. Holman… arrived at work last week to find a representative of the Prime Minister’s Office visiting his shop.
With avid baseball fan George W. Bush about to visit, the PMO staff figured there was no better gift to line up than one of Holman’s bats.”
“It’s really a rush, I must admit it,” Mr. Holman said.
“Rumours persist in the United States that Mr. Bush would one day like to become commissioner of baseball. With that in mind, Mr. Holman suggested a bat for the U.S. leader inscribed “to the future commissioner of baseball. … “[Mr. Holman’s brother] said ‘You ought to make two models-the Presidential 41 and 43 models,’ ’’ Mr. Holman said, referring to Mr. Bush’s status as the 43rd U.S. president and to his father, George H.W. Bush…
“We shortened it to Prez 41 and 43. We ran that by the PMO and they said, ‘Great.’ ”
The second bat is inscribed “to the father of the future commissioner of baseball.”
Mr. Holman also added the logo of a red, white and blue ribbon to each bat, in recognition of the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks in the United States."
“Mr. Holman said he had put the logo on some bats for the 2001 World Series and believes players of the New York Yankees and Arizona Diamondbacks kept them as souvenirs. “We didn’t see any of them being used.”
2005
Time – Canadian Edition
May 16, 2005Ottawa Slugger, Sam Holman (Sam Bat) By Laura Blue
“The likes of Jose Canseco and Joe Carter gave Holman’s custom-made maple bats rave reviews in the 1990’s. Giants star Barry Bonds used them in 2001 when he broke the Major League Baseball (MLB) single-season home-run record. And 250 MLB players are using Holman’s custom-made maple bats this season [2005]."
“A dozen people work for Holman, carving the bats with custom-made lathes in a converted 19th century tavern. For the 2005 season they made 17,000 maple bats- about a third of which go to the major leagues”.
“…[Sam Holman] admires [the players] as fellow professionals. “They really are the salt of the earth,” he says. “They’re devotion and dedication to playing the game is a phenomenal thing to see.”
2006
Sports Illustrated
September 18, 2006Ryan Howard By Franz Lidz
“The crack of Howard’s 34 ½-ounce bat was easy on Rollins’s ear. “When he connected, it was loud, like somebody had turned up the volume,” says Rollins. “It was a beautiful sound, and I knew the ball would be leaving the yard.”
No Date
The Ottawa Citizen (Canadian)
ottawacitizen.comHolman swings for fences in big-league bat market – By Wayne Scanlan
“Sam Holman is outgrowing his workshop on Bayswater Avenue.”
“At his current home-run pace, Tampa Bay Devil Rays slugger Jose Canseco is building a career season. He’s doing it with a [SamBat].”
“[Canseco] might swing the heaviest of Holman’s bats. But he’s only one of many big-name big-leaguers who can’t get enough of them.”
The Ottawa Citizen
He Crafts the Ferrari of Baseball Bats By Kelly Egan
“Sam Holman calls it his Ferrari, a… wood kiln that is helping him make the most important bats in baseball.”
“On Sunday, [Mr. Beltran] hit a jaw-dropping home run on a pitch that was so low it looked destined to bounce off home plate. Instead, he bounced it out of the park. That was some swing; that was some bat.”
Sun Sentinel (Florida)
Bat Man carves out a niche; Sam Holman’s maple bat is revolutionizing the industry. Bulldog Bat Man slowly cracks the market. By Dave Joseph
“They probably think there’s a factory. A few dozen workers too. The very thought makes Sam Holman laugh. “They probably think I’ve got the whole nine yards,” he said. …you wonder if Barry Bonds knows the maker of one of his bats is working out of a two-car garage in Canada? You wonder if Jose Canseco knew the Rideau Crusher he was swinging was being made on an assembly line of just one.
… You see, just a mile from Parliament Hill in the capital of Ottawa in a wood-frame garage attached to a 95 year old house, Holman…is making some of Major League Baseball’s most sought-after baseball bats.”
“I tell people if you can get your hands on them, don’t let go,” Canseco said last month at Pro Player Stadium.”
“Holman, whose kitchen is stacked with wood, has three lathes, a computer to store each player’s bat specifications and two craftsmen working with him. He also bought tools from Arc Industries, a local employer of the disabled, to turn the maple from square timber to rounded wood. …Holman is hoping to eventually move out of his garage to a workshop.”
Indians Insider
Report: Jacobs makes pitches to Ganley, Dolan
“The Bat Bat –
Manny Ramirez showed clubhouse visitors a bat he’d received from a company in Toronto. The bat featured a black bat, the kind that fly at night, painted on the label of the bat.
As Ramirez showed the bat to different people he was humming the theme song from the old Bat Man TV series staring Adam West.
“I’m going to use it in the game,” said Ramirez. “The wood is really hard.”
Ramirez used the bat bat in the fourth and flied out to center.
“A lot of the Blue Jays use that kind of bat,” infielder Enrique Wilson said. “Somebody must have sent one to Manny.” –
