Marucci Bats get praise in SI

SI writer went on quest to be able to go yard in a MLB park, came to BR to get his bats


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"The only break in this schedule came in mid-May, when I traveled to Baton Rouge to visit the bat makers at Marucci Sports. I didn’t just need bats, I had decided—I needed the best bats in the world. And if Pujols, David Ortiz and Anthony Rizzo are to be believed, those bats bear a cursive M on the barrel.

The Marucci story began in a Baton Rouge tool shed 15 years ago, when LSU trainer Jack Marucci lathed a wooden bat for his eight-year-old son, Gino. One bat became several, until one of them landed in the hands of Carlos Beltrán, then with the Mets, in the spring of 2006. Beltrán went deep 41 times that summer, still his career high. The company and its reputation took off like one of the 425 homers that the now-40-year-old Beltrán has blasted.

I knew none of this when Marucci VP Kyle Ourso handed me a glossy Beltrán model in his company’s showroom; the CB15 simply felt better in my hands than the 20 or so other Maruccis I swung that day. I’d always thought that bats were all alike. But these seemed different in the way that a samurai sword differs from a butter knife