Inventor comes up with a no-break wooden bat

By Patrick Saunders | The Denver Post • Published April 08, 2009

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Ward Dill has two passions in life: baseball and woodworking. He’s married the two to create what he thinks is the world’s best, most durable and safest baseball bat.

“When I was thinking about the merits of a bat, I was thinking that it should be durable, that you could hit on any part of the bat with equal effectiveness and that it should be true to the game,” said Dill, a 56-year-old inventor and Boston Red Sox fan with a master’s degree from MIT.

Dill’s invention is not your father’s Louisville Slugger. Nor is it your son’s aluminum bat that “pings” as the baseball rockets off a metal barrel.

Dill’s “ah-ha” moment came after crafting a wooden vase for his wife, Wendy. He joined together pieces of wood from a tree in his back yard. Impressed by the vase’s strength and beauty, his thoughts then turned to baseball.

“When I made the vase, the aesthetic was pleasing to me,” he said. “Then I wondered what it would be like if I took wood pieces and turned them into a baseball bat.”

That was the genesis of Radial Bat, a company that designs and manufactures bats in a small shop in Warren, N.J. The bats are made of 12 wedges of solid wood bound together by a powerful adhesive and clamped under 36,000 pounds of pressure. The bats, which sell for $100-$150 depending on size and type of wood (ash or maple), come with a one-year warranty against breakage.

Safety is one of Dill’s prime selling points.

Traditional wood bats are cut from one piece of wood. When they crack, they can shatter with ugly consequences. Last season, Pittsburgh Pirates coach Don Long, umpire Brian O’Nora and Susan Rhodes, a fan at Dodger Stadium, were all hit in the head by the flying barrels of broken bats.

Rhodes was severely injured when the bat used by Rockies first baseman Todd Helton shattered and flew into the stands, striking her in the jaw. She ended up with two jaw fractures and multiple surgeries.

A Major League Baseball study found that more than 1,700 bats broke during a 2 1/2-month span last summer. That prompted MLB to contract with the USDA’s forest products laboratory to provide new guidelines for a safer grade of wood used in bats.

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