Thank You for Fungo Bats and Sugar Maples

I've been wanting a fungo bat (What coaches use to hit groundballs and flyballs to their team) for a couple of years now. I've held off on buying one, though. I just couldn't justify spending the money. Yesterday as we were pulling into Antigo just after sunrise my Dad mentioned that there is a lumber mill in Antigo that makes bats for Brewer's sluggers Ryan Braun and Cory Hart. He said there is a special characteristic to the sugar maples in that part of the state that produces a good bat. I thought it was interesting, but didn't think about it much after that.

Well, it was getting close to dinner time and we were looking at the house my Dad was born and raised in. There wasn't much else we wanted to do, so we were getting ready to head back home. But just than we'd noticed just two blocks down from his old house was the mill where the slugger's bats are made. So we decided to stop in at the office and see if they actually sold the bats right there. The secretary confirmned they did and went it got someone from that part of the mill that could show me the bats.

Twenty minutes and One Hundred and Twenty Dollars later I walked out of their with two fungo RockBats, one 33" and the other 35." I don't really regret buying them. With my families' interest in baseball I think I'll be hitting fungos for quite some time. One thing I will say, though, is that I don't like to see sugar maples cut. I never liked cutting them when I was a logger and I hate seeing others cut them now. I'd rather see the trees being tapped for maple syrup than being killed for lumber. So thank you to the sugar maple trees who gave up their lives to make my fungo bats.

They'll be put to good use.