Stuart Miller

Good Wood: the Story of the Baseball Bat Stuart Miller

Here is the true story in baseball bat, from the first hand-hewn sticks to the latest innovation like the V-grip.


Louisville Slugger, Spaulding, Adirondack, Mizano, ash, maple, birch are all here. As are the men who have swung them so well: Wagner, Cobb, Ruth, Williams, Musial, Robinson, Mays, Mantle, Aaron, Rose, Schmidt, and hundreds of others.

Learn how bats are made; why they now explode with such ferocity; what happens when you shave, bone, stain, cup or cork them; the many shapes, lengths, weights and woods they come in.

Find out what is the MVB- Most Valuable Bat- of all time (spoiler alert, it belonged to the Babe), and decided for yourself whether Shoeless Joe's Black Betsy that someone paid over $500,000 for was the original or not.



Discover how Casey at the Bat became the most popular baseball poem ever, the reason Wonderboy was replaced by Savoy Special in The Natural, the many movies that have featured a bat as a deadly weapon, what happened to good ol' Charlie Brown after he went yard, and where you can observe artist Claes Oldenburg's, Batcolumn.