Our Background
You’ve probably read all the stories about former players, former carpenters, former bat reps, or even former sawmills deciding to start their own maple baseball bat business. At RockBats, we have a different story to tell...
RockBats was founded by Roland Hernandez - a Research Engineer from the USDA Forest Products Laboratory - the national research laboratory of the Forest Service located in Madison, Wisconsin. Read more about the Forest Products Laboratory at their website...
For over 17 years, Roland worked on special research projects in the engineered wood products and structures group. His research projects usually involved glued-laminated timber (glulam) - those large beams used in churches and commercial structures. Roland's projects covered many areas, including finding new uses for species not often used in glulam, developing computer simulation models that analyzed the stresses in these glulam beams, and even developing the strongest glulam beam in the industry. That Forest Service research (this report), was used by Anthony Forest Products to create what is now called the "Power Beam" (see here). To this day, this is still the strongest glulam beam available in the wood products industry.
In addition to the 50+ research reports, Roland has authored several chapters in various Wood Engineering textbooks. The most well-known of these textbooks is the Wood Handbook (see right), where Roland authored the chapter on Glued Structural Members.
In September 2007, Roland left the Forest Service to expand his RockBats business and is now living his dream and operating RockBats, and other businesses, 100%.
In the month of December, 2008 - he developed the ultimate all-wood laminated composite baseball bat.
The RockBat with "HardCore Technology" - read more about this in our composites page.
This too should become the strongest and highest-performing engineered all-wood bat in the industry.
The Lumber Business
In 2000, Roland and his wife, Elaine, started a hardwood lumber business named ROLAINE Enterprises. Starting in about 2001, one of the items that were sold were 3x3x36 hard maple squares that were from Sugar Maple trees from right here in Wisconsin. Surprisingly, it was not the everyday wood turners that were purchasing these, but baseball bat manufacturers. In the span of about one year, ROLAINE Enterprises produced over 3000 maple squares for various baseball bat manufacturers. Two of those customers soon became major league certified, and the wood used in their bats was initially made from our ROLAINE stock. Feedback from players regarding THEIR bats were that this was the hardest Rock Maple wood they had ever swung. There were even sports reporters calling Roland to ask where this amazing wood came from. Having read all those stories about the “special” White Ash that Louisville Slugger harvests from those “secret” forests in the Appalachians, Roland's answer was always (with a smirk)... this was Wisconsin Sugar Maple (Acer saccharum) that was processed specifically for straight-grain baseball bat blanks and the actual location of this forest was a “secret”.
Well, the demand and the stress of producing the highest-quality wood for major league baseball were finally too much for this “hobby” business. Requests were coming in for over 3000 maple blanks per month!
ROLAINE Enterprises decided that it was time to begin producing only enough wood that was comfortable for their business. All the effort that was being applied to producing our baseball bat blanks were now directed toward their very own product. So in 2002, ROLAINE decided that they would start producing their very own baseball bats. But what were they going to call them?
ROLAINE Enterprises Bats – ROLAINEBats? No.
RoBats? - Nah.
HARD Maple Bats – could be called HardBats? No.
Sugar Maple Bats – could be called SugarBats? SweetBats? Nope.
Hard ROCK Maple Bats – RockBats! Now THAT sounds like a baseball bat!
RockBats!
With the development of a new business, now it was time to develop the first bat model. The first bat model was a hybrid - a durable and comfortable M110 handle, with a larger C243-style barrel. Great wood, nice bat shape, but now RockBats needed a logo.
The RockBats logo had to have something to do with Maple. So Roland walked out to the maple tree in his front yard, and plucked the lucky leaf that was to eventually become the symbol of the best hard maple baseball bat in the industry. There were lots of initial ideas for a logo, but the first official logo was a combination of a diamond and a leaf.
Great wood, nice bat shape, and now a nice logo. But there was still something missing to make these RockBats "SPECIAL".
And that's when the idea of sweet spot testing was born. Roland remembered from back in his engineering days at Texas A&M University that the sweet spot could be calculated using the geometric parameters of the bat shape. This "calculated" sweet spot was more accurately referred to as the Center of Percussion. After calculating where the sweet spot location should be, Roland tested several bats and found that the sweet spot location varied from bat to bat. The sweet spot that was being determined by test was more accurately referred to as the node of vibration. It quickly became apparent that...
“No Two Solid-Wood Baseball Bats Are Alike”!
Even two bats having the same shape and weight can have slightly different sweet spot locations. That's because wood varies from tree to tree, and elasticity of the wood varies from tree to tree. A stiffer wood is going to vibrate at a much higher frequency than a more flexible wood, so this affects the location of the vibration node point - i.e. affects the location of the sweet spot on the bat.
RockBats is the only bat manufacturer that identifies the location of the sweet spot on the barrel of the bat.
The Business
The first marketing efforts promoted RockBats as the only baseball bat in the industry that was individually tested for sweet spot location. Those who used them said “WOW”, and RockBats gained a good number of loyal customers. However, the comfort zone was only about 300 to 400 bats per year. ROLAINE Enterprises would process only 300 to 400 baseball bat billets per year. Roland and Elaine had to repeatedly remind themselves that ROLAINE Enterprises was just a hobby business, and that hobby business now had a spin-off hobby business (RockBats). In RockBats' first year, 3 bats were sent to the NCAA Baseball Bat research center at the University of Massachusetts – Lowell. This was not necessary, because these were solid-wood bats, and the NCAA Ball Exit Speed Ratio (BESR) test was intended for NON-WOOD bats. However, Roland wanted test data to show how well these RockBats would perform. The NCAA standard test at the time for NON-WOOD BATS was a machine that swung a bat at a ball (see right), and the exit speed of the ball could not be any higher than 97 miles per hour. Even the expensive $300-$400 metal composite bats had to undergo this test for NCAA certification, and they too could not exceed the 97 mph limit. Journal articles on the performance of solid-wood bats showed that White Ash could reach speeds in the upper-80 mph, and up to about 90 to 92 mph for Hard Maple bats. During the testing, our RockBat achieved a reading of 94.96 mph. Basically, our RockBat tested at 95 mph, which was just 2 mph shy of the legal limit. The test guys could not tell us if this was the highest test result that there ever was with a solid-wood bat – they’re not supposed to. But after that testing, all that we could say was “WOW”.
In 2004, RockBats sent out a survey to everyone on their mailing list, and asked for comments on the design of a new logo. It was decided to lose the ".COM" in the logo, but all else would remain the same. This resulted in larger letters that spelled "RockBats".
Our Growth
At the end of 2005, RockBats was approached by some investors that were interested in helping the company grow. Not just increasing the number of customers, but making it to the MAJOR LEAGUES!
To make a long story short (uh, too late for that now), RockBats, LLC was created and produced several times more bats in 2006 than all of our previous years combined. Throughout the growing year of 2006, several partners joined the group.
It is now 2009, and we have undergone many changes at RockBats. Our core operating ownership consists of:
Ben, Mike, and Charlie Zelazoski, the family-owned manufacturing facility at Zelazoski Wood Products, Inc. are part owners of RockBats, LLC. With their help and expertise, our RockBat product has transformed from just a lathe-turned piece of wood to a high-performance engineered wood product.
Mike and Christy Kingery came on board as the Major League connection. Mike had 17 years of professional baseball experience as an outfielder with the Kansas City Royals, Seattle Mariners, San Francisco Giants, Oakland A's, Colorado Rockies and Pittsburgh Pirates. Today, Mike owns and operates Solid-Foundation Baseball Academy. When we develop a new baseball bat design, all prototype bats are placed in Mike's hands to be evaluated for its performance and feel.
We maintained our uniqueness by still placing a mark at the sweet spot location. Bats used by professionals look exactly the same as that shown below, except that they cannot have the sweet spot sticker.
So that’s our story.
RockBats was not founded by a former player, not a former carpenter, not a former bat rep, nor by a former sawmill - we were founded by a wood scientist.
Whether you are an amateur player or a professional player who plays in front of thousands of fans, the baseball bat is THE most important tool in your game. Making contact with the ball is up to you. Providing the solid-wood baseball bat, made by the most highly-advanced processing and manufacturing techniques, using true Hard Maple wood that passes the strictest sawing, drying, selection, grading, and inspection criteria in the industry - is what RockBats has to offer.
RockBats are the most highly-advanced, solid-wood baseball bats in the industry today.
Click here if you are ready to order your RockBat.