Building a Better Bat - NYTimes.com Quirks of the Game is a regular feature on The Times's sports blogs. Louisville Slugger was behind in the count. "We had grown complacent," said Bob Hillerich, part of the fifth generation to run Hillerich & Bradsby, the family business that has been making bats for major league players nearly since the birth of the pro game. The National League started in 1876; the first Hillerich bat was made around 1884. When Hillerich took over as director of wood bat operations after a decade in research and development and nearly another in safety and security, he was dismayed by what he saw. He had a major league player, Jack Hannahan, return a shipment of bats. He found that the grand old bat of baseball had been passed by as competitors introduced technological advances that would echo the aluminum and composite designs that players had grown used to seeing when they were younger. What our competitors were doing opened my eyes. Players wanted something new and something that used new technology," Hillerich said. So, three years ago, he set out to reinvent the Louisville Slugger. The new Louisville Slugger MLB Prime still relies on ash and maple from forests in New York and Pennsylvania, but the process of making it differs nearly every step of the way, although in many ways the new models rely on some of the same ideas competitors have been implementing for several years. Some major leaguers - Buster Posey, Joey Votto, Jay Bruce, Evan Longoria - last year used bats that incorporated some of the changes, but the completely overhauled version made its debut Sunday. In recent years, a surge in boutique manufacturers creating their own niches has taken bat making in two directions:a return to its roots, with an emphasis on craftsmanship over automated manufacturing, and a high-tech approach. Louisville Slugger has taken both from column A and column B. One small company, New Jersey-based Akadema, was, if not the first business, one of the first to market Amish craftsmanship. In its early days, Akadema hired Amish woodworkers; Louisville Slugger, which for years had boasted about its precision machinery, is following suit, touting its hands-on emphasis as "Amish-style craftsmanship" although Hillerich said he prefers thinking of it as "making the bats like my great-grandfather did." But after the old-school approach to cutting wood, Hillerich is going high-tech to finish the bats. Kiln drying has been replaced by the vacuum drying process made popular by other companies that sought to remove the moisture from maple bats. Sam Bat, the company that made maple popular with an assist from Barry Bonds's 73-homer season, has long used this approach, as have most other maple bat manufacturers, because it removes the moisture more efficiently, creating a denser and more durable wood. Louisville Slugger sampled four vacuum drying companies, inviting their pro players to use each and provide feedback before making a final selection. A few new steps in the process appear to be unique to Louisville Slugger. For years, the company and ballplayers have "boned" bats, rubbing cow bones or porcelain over the wood to harden it and prevent flaking. "When it's done by hand, arms get tired and it is inconsistent, rubbed deeper in some places than others," Hillerich said. Now the bats will go through a 360-compression machine that provides pressure, heat and friction in a deeper and more consistent manner, creating a harder bat. The most challenging part of the process was the finish. "Players told us as far back as 2003 they wanted a harder bat and a harder-looking bat," Hillerich said. We found that a smooth surface resonated as being harder. Creating a smoother finish was no easy task - it took two and a half years and plenty of searching. Hillerich went through several companies on his own, then hired a consultant who went through more than two dozen suppliers. The company now boasts that on the American Society for Testing and Materials universal hardness scale, the finish was rated 9H, the highest possible. The previous approach yielded a 6H rating, for those of you scoring at home. The company is also selling the bats retail, the first time the top quality wood has been made available to the general public, though it will continue make bats the old way, since those are more affordable (MLB Prime Maple bats are $119 apiece, Prime Ash $99 and regular maple $89.) "These bats are not for everybody," Hillerich said. Only the best players are really going to get an advantage from using them. The bats not only sound and feel different, the look different - for the first time since 1980, the company has changed its logo. Planning started about a year ago, said Kyle Schlegel, vice president of marketing, with the change tied both to the new wood bats and the decision to merge the company's metal bats into the Louisville Slugger brand for the sake of consistency. Schlegel said Interbrand, the agency hired for the redesign, was told to talk to everyone from executives to factory workers about the company's brand and its rich history and then to start from scratch as if nothing were sacred. "With their first round, John Hillerich looked and said, "Where did my Louisville Slugger brand go?"" Schlegel said, referring to the chief executive, so the design worked its way back to something recognizable. "We asked consumers and players what was it they held dear and what they were willing to let go of," Schlegel said. The oval, which has been there from the beginning, was considered inviolable and the font for the "gg" in Slugger was thought essential too, even though it has only been around since 1980. The "125," which dates to 1916, was deemed expendable, especially once it was replaced by the LS inside a diamond. Customers surveyed were more open-minded than major leaguers. "Players were more conservative," Schlegel said. They are very superstitious. Many players were less concerned with the oval than with what was just outside of it - since 1930, the company has boasted, next to the logo, that its bats are "Powerized," the word accompanied by a bolt of lightning. The major leaguers insisted that their bats keep this talisman, as if it made balls go over fences. "Some players, like Jay Bruce, were very anxious about this, saying, "What will happen to my Powerized bat?"" Schlegel said. So we are keeping that word on our pro player and elite bats.