Jack Marucci, the director of athletic training for LSU sports teams, couldn’t find an affordable wooden baseball bat for his 7-year-old son. Marucci decided to make a bat himself, calling upon skills he learned in ninth-grade woodshop class.
What began as a labor of love seven years ago has become the Marucci Bat Company, whose loyal customers include some of the world’s top professional ballplayers.
“You can hit the ball farther with the Marucci bat,” says Philadelphia Phillies outfielder Raul Ibanez, a veteran of 14 major-league seasons and the starting left fielder July 14 in the 80th Major League Baseball All-Star Game.
“That sounds corny. That sounds unbelievable, but believe me and all the players that are using it: It’s true. It’s by far the hardest bat I’ve ever used, and that makes it the best bat I’ve ever used.”
The Marucci bat keeps showing up at memorable moments in Major League Baseball. The latest came in the All-Star Game, when Adam Jones of the Baltimore Orioles used one of his Marucci bats to drive in the winning run in the American League’s 4-3 victory in St. Louis.
Marucci, 45, was there as a guest of Cardinals first baseman Albert Pujols, whose quest for a second consecutive National League Most Valuable Player award features his exclusive use of Marucci bats. Pujols gave the Baton Rouge company the kind of exposure money can’t buy when he gripped one of the bats for the cover photo of Sports Illustrated’s March 16 issue.
“We’re in the big leagues now,” Joe Lawrence, one of three major partners in the company, says in literal and figurative language.
Lawrence, a Lake Charles native and former major-league infielder, estimates more than 100 everyday players primarily use Marucci bats. Including occasional customers, he says, the company puts bats in the hands of more major-leaguers than any of the roughly 30 remaining suppliers who are chasing longtime market kingpin Louisville Slugger.
“We’ve started seeing some income this past year,” Marucci says, “but you can’t put a price tag on what we’ve done. I’ve taken my son to major-league ballparks. We’ve had incredible access. We’ve made some great relationships. It’s been a lot of fun.”
Pedro Feliz provided another highlight for Marucci Bat Company with a game-winning hit for the Phillies in last year’s World Series against the Tampa Bay Rays. Feliz was one of six starters in the lineup to swing a Marucci. That number included first baseman Ryan Howard, who used a Marucci to win the 2006 home-run championship and National League MVP award.
If Pujols repeats as MVP, it would give Marucci Bat Company four consecutive winners of the NL’s top award for position-player performance.
“It took Pujols about eight years to settle on a bat,” Marucci says. “Now, he won’t touch another.”
On deck
Gino Marucci was 7 and looking for a wooden bat for youth baseball. His father, Jack, a baseball fan dating to his childhood in Pennsylvania and his love for Pittsburgh Pirates outfielder Roberto Clemente, knew his son would become a better hitter swinging wood instead of aluminum.
“Wood is less forgiving,” Marucci says. “It’s the best hitting coach there is.”
Either the sizes or the prices were wrong. Encouraged by Matt Mauck, a former minor-leaguer who played quarterback for LSU’s football team, Marucci bought a lathe for about $80 and made a bat.
“The Little League players liked the bats because they were different,” Marucci says. “They were made of wood. They had the player’s name on it. They weren’t aluminum.”
He bought a shed, 6 feet by 9 feet, and put it in his backyard. Marucci started making more bats, and people started buying them.
On a lark in 2003, Marucci contacted Eduardo Perez, who played at Florida State when Marucci was a team trainer. Marucci was headed to a trainers’ meeting in St. Louis, where Perez, the son of former Cincinnati Reds first baseman Tony Perez, played for the Cardinals. At Perez’s urging, Marucci cut him a few bats.
Perez said he’d use them in batting practice and, if it went well, in a game. Marucci, who had only seen youths swing his bats, wondered whether the force of a major-leaguer making contact with a 90-mph fastball might shatter one of his creations.
Perez hit a liner to Reds shortstop Barry Larkin. The bat survived. “I think that’s when Jack was hooked,” Perez says.
Larkin, who met Marucci before the game because Perez was a mutual friend, asked if he could take a bat. In a subsequent series, Larkin recorded the first major-league hit with a Marucci bat.
The bats started making the rounds. Manny Ramirez called in 2004, before he and the Boston Red Sox played the New York Yankees in the American League Championship Series. Marucci made him three bats, and he gave them the model number “CB 24.” The 24 was for Ramirez’s jersey number. The CB stood for Curse Buster, as in the Curse of the Bambino. The Red Sox defeated the Yankees, rallying from the brink of elimination, and went on to win the World Series.
After that, orders begin pouring in.
“Larkin,” Marucci says, “is the one who told me, ‘You need to do something with this.’ I was just a one-man show. I wasn’t even approved by the league. I had to be careful even talking about the guys who were using the bat.”
Called up
Marucci applied for league approval in 2005. The commissioner’s office called and asked for basic information. After Marucci provided his home address, he was asked for his company address. There was silence, followed by multiple clarifications asking for the location of the bat company.
Marucci laughs as he recalls his response: “You’re welcome to come down and take a look. It’s a 6-by-9 building in my backyard.”
Lawrence played one season in the majors, 2002. An all-state high school football player, he tried out at LSU as a 27-year-old walk-on in 2004. A knee injury ended his career, but that’s how he met Marucci. Soon, a role of casual adviser because of Lawrence’s baseball knowledge led to a more formal business partnership.
Kurt Ainsworth, a Baton Rouge native and former LSU pitcher who was then in the major leagues, became involved. After arm injuries that began in 2003 ended his career in 2006, he became a more hands-on CEO of the Marucci Bat Company.
“It was a transition for me and Kurt,” Lawrence says, “and a hobby for Jack. That’s the best way to describe it. We went through Business School 101 in a hurry, and it’s a real company now.”
The New York Yankees, whose Marucci customers include Jorge Posada, invited Marucci to spring training in 2008. The same year, his company bought the wood mill in Pennsylvania that provided most of the lumber for the bats.
This year, Marucci teamed with Joel Albin of Livingston to produce a line of aluminum bats. Local and international accounts for wood and aluminum products fuel the company’s growth.
“That’s how we survive,” Marucci says. “Major League Baseball is what the kids recognize, but that’s not what drives our wagon.”
After moving six times in four years, the company is headquartered in a warehouse district off Siegen Lane. Equipment costing six figures marks the growth of an enterprise that once fit inside a backyard shed.
“You know you’re pretty big when you have to buy a forklift,” Marucci says, laughing.
None of that impresses major-league players. They say Marucci has an unbeatable combination of personalized customer service and attention to detail. The processes in making a bat, from a proprietary series of technical tests to the old-school method of rubbing bats with a cow’s femur, are extensive.
“He’s so precise,” says Ibanez, who recalls telling Marucci one year his bat handles seemed thinner than usual. Initially skeptical, Marucci measured the bats again and found that in one spot, they were three millimeters thinner.
“He made new bats that were three millimeters thicker in that spot,” Ibanez says. “You put it back in your hands, and you go, ‘That’s perfect.’ It’s amazing. He’s unbelievable.”
Ibanez calls it “old-fashioned pride.” Marucci’s name is on the bat, the ballplayer says, so he has exacting standards a bat must achieve before sending it out into the world.
“Every bat is a gamer,” Ibanez says. “If you get a dozen bats, you can use a dozen bats in a game. That’s a rare thing in the bat world, because it’s wood. You’re dealing with wood, with trees. They’re not all the same, but somehow Jack manages to make each bat with the same quality.”
For ballplayers, that means a hard bat.
“You want a hard bat,” Jones says, “so it’s not going to crack every time you get jammed. His bats are hard. Since I’ve been using them, I think the success has been there.”
Perez, now an analyst on ESPN’s Baseball Tonight, says little touches on the Marucci bat set a standard the traditional bat companies are beginning to copy.
“The date, the born-on date on the bat, Jack was the first to come up with that,” he says. “A player can pick up a bat, and he might think, ‘When did I get this bat? How old is this bat?’ It makes it easier to track weight changes because of the difference in humidity from one place to another.
“I said on Baseball Tonight that it’s the Rolls-Royce of bats,” he says. “Jack thinks it’s the Ferrari of bats because he’s Italian, but to me calling it the Rolls-Royce of bats is what defines these bats. You’re not going to compete with the quantity of Louisville Slugger, but the quality is second to none.”
Ibanez says it proved Marucci bats have high standards, or they won’t make it to the minors or the majors.
“It tells me the quality of the wood is better because of the much higher pitch,” says Ibanez, a guitar player whose ear for the correct musical note deepened his appreciation for the “tune” of the Marucci bat.
“When Jack first started doing this, he actually used to put on the bat what the pitch was—a D or E—and I understand that language. Every sound has a note, and he was taking a tuning fork and putting it next to the bat, and that’s what he found to be the most effective way of telling what quality of wood he had.”
Marucci says the company grew and continues to grow because of the reputation among players.
“Our sales force has been Albert Pujols, Jose Reyes, Raul Ibanez, Jorge Posada and Ryan Howard,” he says. “You can’t have any better sales force than that.”
