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Sam Bat, officially The Original Maple Bat Corporation, is a Canadian company based in the town of Carleton Place, Ontario that manufactures . It was the first company to supply baseball bats manufactured from maple wood to professional baseball players. As of 2013, it is one of 32 licensed baseball bat suppliers for Major League Baseball (MLB) and Minor League Baseball (MiLB) players. It is also a bat supplier for baseball leagues throughout the world, including Germany, Japan, Korea, Italy, Mexico, and the Netherlands. It is the official bat manufacturer for the Australian Baseball League.
The company was founded in 1997 by Sam Holman, who manufactured bats in his garage at the company's inception. Its president is Arlene Anderson, who with her husband Jim and investor Paul Balharrie acquired shares in the company in 2008.
After spring training in 1996, Holman's friend Bill Mackenzie, who was working as an MLB baseball scout for the Colorado Rockies, told him that baseball bats were breaking too frequently, asking Holman if he could "do something about it". Holman read about the physics of baseball and researched baseball bat . After some trials with ironwood, he eventually settled on using maple wood, which has greater density than the traditional Fraxinus wood, to manufacture bats.
He manufactured his first bat in his garage from a stairway bannister, and tested the 33-ounce bat with local children before Mackenzie suggested a test trial with the Ottawa Lynx, a nearby Triple-A minor league team in the International League. Among the players to test the bat was Fernando Seguignol, who became the first professional player to hit a home run with a maple bat. In April 1997, Holman went to Toronto, where he met with Joe Carter, Carlos Delgado, and Ed Sprague Jr., convincing them to test his bats during batting practice.
Holman established the company with financing from his sister in 1997 following the successful trial of his bats by the Toronto Blue Jays. Carter used a Sam Bat, which was not officially licensed by MLB at the time, by sneaking it into a game during the 1997 season, hitting a home run in one of his . He became the company's first MLB client. In 1998, MLB approved the maple bat for use in games, and Sam Bat became an authorized licensee of MLB.
Holman continued to manufacture baseball bats in a workshop at his home until opening a factory on a site in Gatineau in late 2001. In November 2011, the company moved to North Industrial Park in Carleton Place.
Holman's brother Nathan designed the bat logo.
Each bat model can be manufactured using billets in a small range of weights (for example, the bat manufactured for Miguel Cabrera is made from billets between , usually ). After a final visual inspection, it is mounted into a wood Automatic lathe, which in up to four minutes shapes the billet to match a template, leaving sufficient material for Sandpaper. The bat's handle and barrel are then measured with a caliper to ensure it meets the template's specifications, and for models that require it, the end of the barrel is cupped (a small indentation is carved into the head of the barrel to shift the bat's centre of gravity toward the handle). The superfluous ends are cut off, and it is then mounted into a sanding lathe, which smooths the bat to its desired weight.
A drop of ink is placed about from the base of the handle, and follows the wood's grain. The path it follows is measured with a protractor using a magnifying glass, and those diverging by more than 3° are rejected. This "ink-dot test" is required by Major League Baseball to ensure bats used in MLB games are less prone to break. Microscopic scratches are smoothed, the bat is painted to the specifications defined by the player for whom it was produced, and the player's name and bat model are laser engraved on the barrel. Each bat is labelled with the logo of a bat and the term "Rideau Crusher", a reference to the nearby Rideau Canal. It is finished with a coat of varnish and dried overnight before being shipped with silica gel, a desiccant that controls humidity to ensure the moisture in the bat does not change.
Bonds became Sam Bat's best client, citing the personal contact with "the man who's bent over making the bats", and the popularity of maple-based bats increased significantly after he began using them. By 2015, the company had 185 MLB players as clients, among them Ryan Braun, Miguel Cabrera, Yoenis Céspedes, Dustin Pedroia, Troy Tulowitzki, and Chase Utley.
Holman did not expect any bids from the listing, which he used partly as a means to advertise the sale of his business. This also provided Holman some time to find investors. Three of five parties that eventually contacted him about purchasing the business learned of it as a result of the eBay listing. In 2007, Paul Balharrie, and husband and wife Arlene and Jim Anderson bought shares in the company. The Andersons own 50% of the company, and Arlene Anderson became the company's president.
Bonds worried that his bat supply may no longer be guaranteed, wrote a cheque for $40,000 to assure delivery of 80 bats during the season. This stabilised the company's finances, enabling it to buy wood it needed to manufacture the bats.
The company now earns 85% of its revenue from international markets, including France, Germany, Japan, Korea, Italy, Mexico, and the Netherlands. It is the official bat manufacturer for the Australian Baseball League.
In 2004, Holman received an invitation to meet George W. Bush (President of the United States) and Condoleezza Rice (United States Secretary of State nominee) during a state visit to Ottawa. On 26 November 2004, a member of the Office of the Prime Minister asked Holman to prepare a bat as an official state gift for the president, an avid baseball fan who had previously owned the Texas Rangers. During a reception at the Canadian Museum of History on 30 November, he presented two bats, one inscribed with "Prez 43" and "to the future commissioner of baseball", the other for his father George H. W. Bush inscribed with "Prez 41" and "to the father of the future commissioner of baseball". Later at the reception, Holman arranged a telephone conversation between Bonds and his fan Rice.
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