Remember that woodturner who started the Baseball Bat company?

[John Shuk]

So many of us woodturners think about ways to make our hobby pay off. I remember reading the story about Marucci bats and being inspired by it 7 or 8 years ago. Here is where things stand for now.
http://www.forbes.com/forbes/2011/0523/entrepreneurs-marucci-reed-dickens-baseball-mlb-big-swing.html

I wonder where things will go from here.

[David Weaver]

It's all about meeting a demand or creating a perceived demand and marketing to it.

I recall going to the sporting goods store when I was little (when they had a big markup - before walmart arrived in town), and you could get an ash louisville slugger in various handle and barrel profiles and various lengths for $9-$13. That was a little over 20 years ago.

I realize that a good hard maple blank costs a little more than ash, but $80 is an awful lot of money for a mechanically turned and burnished little league bat, especially one that can be ruined in a single at bat.

And the major leaguers used louisville sluggers when I was little, so it wasn't like we were using something that had no name to it! Louisville slugger just didn't do as good of a job convincing kids that their bats should be $30-$40 (or whatever would be the equivalent to $80 now). I don't remember how many times I heard "turn the trademark up!" and I had a nice 29 inch bat that had a big barrel and a thin handle - I didn't let any of the other kids use it (there was always a dope who would turn the bat in their hands in the middle of an atbat), but it still only lasted part of a season and eventually cracked.

Not more than 4 years after that, people were paying up to $170 (1990 or so) for easton ceramic bats, and I bought one made of an aluminum alloy for $130 (probably the equivalent of $250+ today). The bats of that generation were the first ones that were light and could really pound a ball without falling apart or denting. My grandparents would roll in their graves if they found out. I still have that bat, but it has some stress cracks around the plug at the top.