An invasive beetle that was accidentally imported to the US from Asia continues to spread in New York state. The emerald ash borer has already destroyed millions of trees.

Now the insect threatens groves of white ash in the southern Adirondacks and the Mohawk Valley, which produce some of the most iconic baseball bats in the country.

A humble plant with a lot of history

On a sweltering day last week, workers sorted chunks of ash wood outside the Rawlings mill in Dolgeville, about an hour's drive west of Albany.

The factory doesn’t look like much, resembling dozens of sawmills in the southern Adirondacks. But inside, roughly three dozen workers make history, turning out ash wood baseball bats used in some of the biggest major league games.

Correction: This story originally misidentified Ron Vander Groef as "Rob". We regret the error.

I think this is a winnable fight. Certainly you can greatly decrease the number of ash trees that are harmed. Remember the "shot heard round the world," when the Giants topped the Dodgers in 1951? That homer was knocked into the lower decks with a bat made right here. Decades later, Rawlings still makes bats used by dozens of big league players. "Customed right to what they want," said Ron Vander Groef, the plant manager. "If they want to change [the bat] by a sixteenth of an inch, they send us a new profile."

Refsneyder and Manny Machado.

This humble little mill still turns out thousands of bats every year used by players in the major and minor leagues.

On the factory floor, a roster of major league players who use these bats includes Andrew Romine, Rob

But Vander Groef said a nasty little bug called the Emerald ash borer is destroying forests that supply his wood. "If the ash borer is not controlled it’ll wipe out the entire species of white ash," he warned. "We will not be able to make any more pro bats or retail bats or anything out of white ash because it will be gone. And if we don’t do something quick with white ash in New York state, we’re only talking a matter of a few years."

State scientists struggling to contain Emerald ash borers

Money needed to fight back

Scientists think the emerald ash borer snuck into the US aboard a freighter carrying wood products from Asia up the St. Lawrence River. It hit Michigan first and spread as far as New York state by 2009. In the last couple of months alone, the beetle was confirmed for the first time in Oneida and Saratoga counties.

Researchers actually have some promising methods to slow the spread of Emerald ash borers, including a program that releases wasps into the wild that hunt and devour the beetles. But New York Senator Chuck Schumer said Federal funding for those programs is being diverted.

Schumer supports a bipartisan bill that would add about $300 million a year to re-fund the fight against invasive insects. "I think this is a winnable fight. Certainly you can greatly decrease the number of ash trees that are harmed," he argued.

It's not just baseball bats on the line. It's whole forests and many of the trees that decorate mainstreets all over New York state. Emerald ash borers have killed roughly 50 million ash trees across the country since 2002.

Vander Groef said he has traveled to places where the infestation is out of control. "Trees were just totally gone, they were dead, standing dead trees."

Scientists say if the beetle isn’t stopped,roughly 8 percent of all the trees in New York state could perish in the next decade.