There are plenty of ways to tear the shroud off dreary winter days, but one of the very best is to think about baseball: emerald fields, cold beer, hot dogs, sunburn and the hope that springs eternal (or springs, at least, until Chase Utley re-injures his knee).
With this in mind I called Steve Toth at the Lehigh Valley Bat Works and asked to come out and take a look at his factory, where he and his partner, Mike Hubbs (a baseball name if ever there was) turn out about 5,000 baseball and softball bats a year for Little Leaguers, minor leaguers, beer leaguers and American Legion players.
January is a slow time of year for batmakers, as you might imagine, but it follows one busy time and precedes another.
"At Christmas we're really busy and in February we go crazy," Toth told me Tuesday when I arrived at the East Allen Township shop, which is equipped with a full-size batting cage where prospective clients can be fitted for the right bat. "We kind of appreciate this slow time."
The bats are the real thing, mind you. They are made not of aluminum, not of graphite, not of Space Age composites, but of wood — ash and maple from forests on the Pennsylvania-New York border.
To Toth, 28, an avid amateur player from Lower Macungie Township, wood is the only proper material for a bat. After all, when Roy Hobbs made his bat in "The Natural," it was from the innards of a lightning-split tree. One does not etch "Wonderboy" on a length of aluminum.
"Since I was about 16, this is what I wanted to do," Toth told me. "Run a wood bat company."
With Louisville Slugger, Rawlings and Easton still chugging along nicely, that would seem to fall squarely in the category of poor business plans, rather like wanting to start your own search engine after checking out Google.
Not so, though. Toth, a Parkland High School graduate with a degree in industrial technology from Millersville University, estimates there are about 30 companies in his category, producing 5,000 to 10,000 bats a year. And, he adds, "about a million guys making 50 bats a year" in garage workshops.
There seems to be enough bat business to go around. Toth is making a tidy living, anyway, serving the area market in ways mass producers can't.
"Because we do all our own engineering, we can tailor bats exactly the way people want them," he said. "A guy playing Legion ball or a kid playing Little League isn't going to get Louisville Slugger's best bat. But they're going to get our best bat."
The process isn't terribly complex, though it must be done with great precision. The raw lengths of wood are called billets. They look like wagon axles. Toth and Hubbs place them on a big lathe and carve them into bat shape, then transfer them to a sander and grind them down further to exact dimensions.
A big portion of each billet becomes sawdust, but the sawdust doesn't go to waste. They sell it to farmers and to companies that make pellets for pellet stoves.
They are painted or stained with a variety of designs and colors, and customers can even customize them with their names. It's about a 10-day turnaround from order to delivery.
One bat in 20 is rejected for some flaw or another. These are turned into wall hangings or trophy bats.
"A lot of those are good bats, but we're not selling them to the general public," Toth said.
Toth does individual and team fittings. For more information, go to http://www.lvbatworks.com or call 484-619–2826.
610-820-6598
