DETROIT – As the Detroit Tigers looked to get back on track tonight against the Toronto Blue Jays, a bat company based in Oakland County and Windsor, led by a pair of former Wayne State University baseball players, made a special presentation before the game.
“Having good baseball bats was so important to us,” Ryan LaPensee, co-owner of Backyard Bats, said on Thursday. He was standing in front of a lathe machine at their small factory in Troy that makes baseball bats for dozens of Major League Baseball players.
“I swung these when I played professionally for the (Arizona) Diamondbacks, so I think for us it’s like we’re still little kids again,” said LaPensee.
The company was started in Windsor in 2004 by Paul LaMantia, LaPensee’s teammate at Wayne State.
LaPensee was the program’s all-time hits leader when he graduated, eventually spending a couple of years in the Arizona farm system.
LaPensee partnered with LaMantia after he finished his professional career, eventually moving operations across the border to Romeo and Troy.
The two lifelong friends have made it to the major leagues, supplying bats to dozens of players, including eight Tigers and Blue Jays’ all-star first baseman Vladimir Guerrero Jr.
Making bats is a passion for them because, like golf clubs, each bat is tailored to the skill set of a particular player.
“Every player is different, right, and it’s something you pointed to, it’s a feel right, so when you pick up that bat, it’s that feeling you get, and being able to talk to someone like Paul or me, and we’ve had that feeling before. So, we can articulate in our heads like ‘Oh, this is what they’re really,’” LaPensee said.
It was former Detroit outfielder and current Philadelphia Phillies outfielder Nick Castellanos who helped the duo get their foot in the door.
Sam Palace, who now works with the company and spent two seasons as the Tigers’ bullpen catcher, connected them.
“I very much enjoyed it because the players,” Palace said outside of Comerica Park on Thursday. “The players confide in you a little bit, and the coaches trusted you to make sure that you know you’re getting the players, you know, ready to rock.”
Castellanos met the duo in the Phillies’ Spring training facility in Clearwater, Florida, last year, and proceeded to hit a home run in his first game with them.
Palace dropped off some custom-made Fungo – or batting practice – bats to Tigers manager A.J. Hinch and the team’s coaching staff.
They got to drop off an order of bats to Guerrero and some of his Toronto teammates.
The company is slowly making a dent in the major league market alongside manufacturers like Victus, Marucci, and Louisville Slugger.
“I keep telling the guys that we’re the best team in the league,” Palace said. “It’s a group of baseball guys who have some business experience, but we wanted to have a baseball company and making baseball equipment for baseball players.”