Dover man updates the baseball bat

DOVER PLAINS — Bruce Leinert, a lifelong native of Dover Plains, has developed a safer, more efficient baseball bat, with a handle angled like that of an axe.One day in 1990, Leinert took to the woods to swing his father’s axe.The activity was a memorial gesture of sorts; as his father had recently passed away, Leinert paid particular attention to where he held the axe — how his father had held that same axe in the same place.This attention to handle detail triggered an epiphany.“I built a bat when I was 12 in school,” said Leinert, a builder by trade and hobby, “I handled them a lot when I was a kid.“I always knew something was not right — I realized the knob was just not right, but I never really thought about how to fix it,” he added. “But that day in the woods swinging the axe, I realized, at that moment, that was the answer to the baseball handle.”That day, Leinert went to the sawmill for a piece of ash and created the first of what would one day be called the axe bat. Fast forward almost two decades — after many prototypes, a legally complex patent process and a saga of networking — Leinert signed an agreement in 2009 with Baden Sports, an equipment manufacturer in California.“We decided that there was something to this design, signed a deal with Bruce and started developing it,” said Baden Sports Director of Research & Development Hugh Tompkins.Several ergonomics studies and 3-D printer models later, Baden had its product refined for the baseball swing.Tompkins said the company even brought in a bio-mechanic to confirm the axe bat’s benefits, including a consistent swing plane and a freer release. “One of the big advantages, outside of all the performance benefits,” Tompkins said, “by putting that asymmetric side on the bat, the one-sided handle, you’re always going to hit with the same side.”The research and development director explained that this allows engineers to design the barrel accordingly — to design the hitting side and non-hitting side with different materials.Now, Baden produces bats in multiple materials (including carbon fiber, alloy and maple) for T-ball, Little League, senior league, adult, fast-pitch softball, slow-pitch softball and major league levels of play.“It’s gratifying to see how an idea I had in the woods is spreading,” Leinert said. “We believe that someday this will be what all bats will look like.”For more information go to www.axebat.com.