Reds' Devin Mesoraco boasts home-grown bats

Devin Mesoraco's bat is a model DM 814, but it might as well say "Wonderboy."

This past offseason, Mesoraco had a dozen bats especially made for him by Marucci Sports from trees from his home in Pennsylvania. None of the trees were felled by lightning like they were in "The Natural," but they're still as close as you'll get in the big leagues to Roy Hobbs' mythical bat.

"I don't think it's ever been done," said Jack Marucci, who owns Marucci Sports. "I'm from the same area, I'm from Uniontown, Pennsylvania, and there's not too many people from the western side of Pennsylvania. Seems like a perfect storm."

On Opening Day, Mesoraco used his usual DM 39 (his initials and jersey number), waiting for that to break before he switches to a new bat, made from one of two maple trees at his house in Punxsutawney, Pennsylvania, where he owns 40 acres, 39 of them covered by trees.

Mesoraco has always used Marucci bats, and last year Marucci came to Arizona to check on some of his clients, including Mesoraco. The two had never met and they started talking, about their backgrounds, Pennsylvania, baseball and, of course, bats.

"He's from Pennsylvania, also. I told him where I was from and he told me they get wood from that area," Mesoraco said. "I said I always thought it would be cool — that's how I said it — I always thought it'd be cool if I could use a bat from my property.

"He thought about it for a second and said, 'let's do it.' He said he'd get in touch with me in the offseason and we'll come up and make sure we get some good wood, that's usable. He had his logger come out and said we'd see if we can find something."

This past winter, Marucci and his logger went out to look at Mesoraco's property and the trees. Out of about 100 maples on the property, they found three they thought would work and took down two.

Marucci said they look for many different things. They look at how the bark grows and whether there are any limbs coming off, because that can create knots. They also look at the trunk, to see how the wood starts there. They want the tree to be between 40 and 80 years old, which they can tell by the height. He wants the tree to be between 15 to 18 inches in girth.

There's a lot of little boxes to tick off, so it's literally finding a single tree in a forest. And, after agreeing to try it, that's what worried Marucci.

"The worry was, that since our standards are so high, we didn't know how many billets we were going to get, you could maybe only get — you could get maybe only 125 billets, which sounds like a lot, but it's not really a lot," Marucci said. "Then you have to go through the process of weighing and grading it. I was expecting we'd get three bats — hoping, really. Because you have to have the right weight, right quality."

Funny thing, when they started looking at it, Marucci's logger said it may have been the best wood they'd seen in five years. And they ended up getting a dozen bats for Mesoraco, plus more they made for his little brother.

The entire Mesoraco family kept tabs on the process, and they were lucky because one of the two facilities Marucci uses, a mill in Punxsutawney, is just seven miles from Mesoraco's house. From there it was sent to Baton Rouge, Louisiana, where Marucci carves the bats, and even there a bat could get rejected.

"That was a big fear because you don't know, you can look at a tree, you can read the grain pattern, but you don't know until you get in," Marucci said. "Or even when we cut them on the lathe, there's defects inside. We're so particular, we'll cut 40-some bats to get a dozen. It worked out perfectly, we picked out the perfect trees. We were fortunate and it was some of the best quality wood we've seen."

In the end, there were 12 bats Mesoraco will use throughout this season — the DM 814 models are the ones from his house, the 814 representing his area code.

Marucci noted he may shed a tear each time one of those 12 bats breaks throughout the season, because each one seems so special. Mesoraco said he's excited to use them, as they were shipped straight from Baton Rouge to Cincinnati, ready for Opening Day.

And the Reds' catcher also knows much more about his bats now, sharing a closer bond than maybe any other professional athlete and his equipment. He also knows where to go to maybe find more.

"He knew the parts of his property where to go to get the trees," Marucci said. "When he's done playing, we may hire him as a consultant up there for our logger up there."

Mesoraco said he could do it — but after signing a new contract during the offseason, it may be off in the distance a bit.

"Maybe it could be a hobby," he said.