BP Sports is the wooden bat supplier endorsed and recommended by the Over-The-Line Players Association (OTLPA).

Quality maple baseball bats are the smart choice for practice and game play. Stronger and more durable than ash bats, maple bats are also a safer alternative to many of the aluminum bats on the market. There are a variety of different species of both hard and soft maple. Professional-quality maple bats are made with either hard sugar or black maple. Our superior bats are only made with hard sugar maple, the hardest maple.

Maple is harder than ash, which makes it a more solid choice for a wood bat. While maple was nearly discarded as an option for baseball bats because of its weight and lengthy drying time, advances in technology have made maple bats a viable option. Because of its dense grain, the denting and chafing from repeated use is minimal on maple bats. The less durable ash bats suffer severe damage from the same repeated use, making maple a more desirable and cost effective alternative to ash. When a maple bat and baseball connect, the player can immediately feel whether it was a good hit or not. There’s nothing like the sound and feel of a baseball connecting with the sweet spot on a sugar maple bat. A good-quality sugar maple bat looks, feels and performs better, longer.

Wood bats have traditionally been made from ash for many years. Ash was easy to mass produce and there was plenty of it to go around. If, like me, you grew up playing baseball with a wood bat, you had one choice and one choice only and that was ash. The performance of these bats was good, however the durability left something to be desired. The very nature of the wood itself was the problem.

Ash has a structure that is open and porous and there are tremendous variations in the quality of the wood. The professional players at the highest levels got the best grades, while the lesser grades filtered down to the amateur and recreational players. The rising cost of wood bats and the frequency with which they broke eventually led to the popularity of aluminum bats.

Aluminum drastically changed the nature of the game. Just as modern technology moved us away from tradition with the introduction of aluminum bats, it has now given us the opportunity to return to our roots. Computer lathing, vacuum kiln drying, and modern stains and finishes have allowed bat makers to use hard sugar maple in their manufacturing process.

The result is a bat that has more pop and much greater durability than those made of ash. Made popular by Barry Bonds and Sammy Sosa, maple wood bats are sweeping the country by storm. The grain of hard maple wood is much tighter and much denser than ash. It is more consistent in nature, thus eliminating the multi grading system that was used with ash. You can now hit with the same bats used by the pros.