 Mason-Dixon
Baseball Co. is proud to be located in Maryland, birthplace of baseball
greats such as Babe Ruth, the Ripken’s, and now the Mason-Dixon Baseball Bat.
The logo salutes the history of Maryland as we superimpose the baseball over the
insignia of the 29th Infantry Division of Maryland which gained fame for its fighting
efforts at Omaha Beach on and after D-Day. Formed after the Civil War from troops
combined from the Confederate and Union Armies, the blue and gray of the yin &
yang insignia represent this merger. If you are superstitious (you’re a baseball
player, aren’t you?), the yin & Yang is about Karma, and baseball is all
about Karma! Mason-Dixon Baseball Bats--- for every pitch, there is a hit!
Why wood? A few years back I had the opportunity to attend an opening series game in franchise history for the nearby Aberdeen IronBirds, Cal & Bill Ripken’s Minor League Baseball team. While the game was exciting for many reasons, I was surprised at how slow the bat speed and ball action off the bat was… It dawned on me that most of these players were just Drafted and, up until a few weeks before, had never swung a wood bat in practice, much less game situations. The bad habits that these good players had developed from 12 plus years of aluminum bat use were glaringly obvious. As a high school coach of a state championship team, I was amazed to see these young professionals with the same swing flaws and bad habits that the players on my team had. These players’ averages all improved as the season progressed, but it was a costly learning experience for them. This all stems from aluminum bats and batting cages--- batting cages usually cost money and nobody wants to waste money by not swinging at bad pitches (balls, not strikes)… therefore we have trained ourselves to swing at bad pitches that would never be called strikes by even a blind umpire! And because aluminum bats are much more forgiving (and less likely to break) players can hit a pitch well out of the strike zone off the handle and still have some success. (TIP: Always swing at strikes only in batting practice!) Wood bats not only help players learn to use the strike zone to their advantage, but also teach the player to “get the head of the bat through the ball” and develop the quick hands that the top professional and college scouts look for. Obviously, players can’t give up the advantage of aluminum bats during games, but our studies have shown that the more batting practice taken with a wood bat, the better that players game day plate performance will be! We suggest that 75%-90% of all batting practice be taken with a Mason-Dixon wood bat and do not swing at pitches out of the strike zone! You’ll soon see the difference and so will the scouts!
The Future of Wood- everything old is new again— My decision to work with wood bats is a natural progression of things, the greatest being my love for the game of baseball after playing 24 plus seasons. My great-grandfather was a commercial decoy carver and inventor in Maryland from the 1890’s and 1900’s with over 30 woodworking related patents to his credit. His grandson, my father, spent much of his childhood in that shop nurturing his passion for wood and himself later became an accomplished furniture maker and award winning ornamental decoy carver. Growing up spending time in may father’s extensive woodshop gave me from an early age a good understanding of wood and grain. In my high school years I worked in a local decoy makers’ shop where I learned to operate the turn-of-the-century copy lathe, turning 6 decoy bodies at one time. How our bats are made? The lathes used for your bats today are no longer the home-made chain driven copy lathes, but rather state of the art CNC machining lathes. However, good wood is still good wood, and knowing how important good wood is for a baseball bat, we use only the finest pre-selected billets from Hard (Rock) Maple and premium Northern Ash. Our bamboo bats are turned from billets that are industrially laminated bamboo strips producing a breaking strength greater than steel. We select ash billets cured to a 7% moisture content and our maple billets are cured to 6% as it is a slightly denser wood. Taking more moisture from the maple billet allows a final product at a lighter weight without causing the wood to become too brittle. Once the turning process has begun we carefully inspect each bat further looking for potential cracks or splits, knots and other grain defects. Bats that other manufacturers would pass through this stage often do not make it through this process with Mason-Dixon Bats. Bats are finish sanded and cupped to tolerances within ½ oz of the desired target weight. Bats are then double hand dipped and rubbed to a furniture grade finish and finally treated with a clear coat shellac to protect and add life to your bat. Custom color bats are available in small lots and custom barrel engraving is available for a nominal fee.
We tend to stay away from the thinner handled bat models that most high school and
college players are used to in today’s aluminum bats. Why?- breakage and weighting---in
order to get the big barreled, thin handled shape of aluminum bats, too much wood
must be removed from the handle making the bat much more susceptible to breakage
in addition to making the bat too barrel heavy, slowing bat speed considerably.
For players switching to wood for the first time, a thicker handled bat will actually
swing quicker for you, more like an aluminum bat (REMEMBER—now that you are
using wood, start to train yourself to be more selective with pitches and even better,
start to look for “your” pitch). Most of our bats will be cupped to
specific weighting tolerances of ½ oz. As for your choice of finish, we offer
Clear lacquer, Black lacquer (we highly recommend the black lacquer for handles
only as the black barrels show the white scuff marks of a baseball, making your
bat look much older than it actually is-no difference in performance, only appearance),
Cherry, walnut, mahogany and a combination of any 2 to create the awesome looking
bat of your choice! Other custom color options are available with the order of 3
or more bats.
|