In 1888, Ernest Thayer penned the classic baseball poem “Casey at the Bat,” which tells the story of an overconfident slugger, Casey, striking out to end a big game. One thing that’s for sure is that UMass Boston senior Casey O’Donnell won’t be striking out soon, because he’s not at bat — he’s making bats. The Pittsfield, MA, resident makes custom wooden bats in a basement. His company, Odo Bats, has grown steadily since its creation in 2009, and the craftsman has gotten better with each spring that has come around. Pittsfield is one of the cradles of the game we know as baseball (O’Donnell was very quick to remind us of the date of the first game played there, Sept. 5, 1791), and O’Donnell feels a great pride in practicing his time honored craft in one of the game’s birthplaces.
O’Donnell had an interesting story when asked about how his company came to be. He said, “I never made little league. It absolutely devastated me. I can’t tell you that I’m the biggest fan of baseball. I can’t tell you that I would’ve been very good at baseball, but I can tell you that I love American culture. Baseball happens to be the number one thing that is entrenched in American culture and society overall. All of my best friends are amazing baseball players, but after I got cut from little league I thought god was trying to tell me that I was not an athlete so I decided to play music.”
He added, “My father is an unbelievable wood worker, he’s one of those guys who can make anything, and he was making these seven inch plugs that were lures to catch fish, and they slightly resembled the bat shape. I always wanted to be a part of the game so I told my friends ‘guys, I’ll make the bats.’ I tried it the first couple of times and the first bats I made were bulky, archaic, caveman crap, but since then I’ve refined my process. It’s gotten a lot better, a lot faster […] my father really set it up for me, he made it dummy proof , and he let me fail, it was a good trial.”
Since selling his first bat at age 23, word of mouth has helped drum up interest for Odo bats around Western Massachusetts. O’Donnell said that each year he has increased his output. In his first year he made 12, 16 the next year, but he has already made 10 since January, including seven in one order. He has supplied bats to a few players in the ultra competative NECBL (New England Collegiate Baseball League) as well as players at D1 colleges. He said, “This year has been my busiest so far. I’m finally starting to be confident in myself as a builder, it’s just starting to build momentum.” He added, “Hopefully this year there will be 30-50 of them.”
At this point, O’Donnell is making a profit from Odo, but he is reinvesting all of it into streamlining his process and buying raw materials. He works with a variety of woods including ash, maple, and the recent trend, birch, made popular by Angels slugger Mark Trumbo. According to O’Donnell, “When you hit with birch, it compacts the surface, so you get this great hitting area as the life of the bat goes on. You basically form your own sweet spot with birch, it’s very cool. Its also easy to work with then other, harder woods. It’s the most popular wood I’m working with now.”
One thing that you can immediately take away from a conversation with O’Donnnell is his love for his craft. When asked about how he feels when he sees one of his bats break, he said, “It feels like as limb of mine has broken. It devastates me. I cherish every one of these. Not only am I disappointed because of all the work that I put into it … but a lot of these players in the smaller leagues, they’re not making a ton of money, so I would rather give them something that’s going to last, but it’s impossible to guarantee. It crushes me.”
He added that a bat can last for a swing, a season, or a lifetime. While he puts as much effort and love into each piece as he can, he made the excellent point that if a bat gets hit with a 90 MPH fastball 18 inches above the knob, it’ll probably break, and there’s nothing he can do about it.
O’Donnell is an advocate in the growing movement to replace aluminum bats with wooden ones in the high school and college game. He said, “Just this year, I’m seeing a transition to wooden bats. The Cal Ripken League (13-14 year olds) has switched to wooden bats; that’s a lot of business for me.” He added, “Aluminum bats were dangerous. Once you get to the high school level, those kids can really swing and the pop off those bats is unbelievable. If the ball comes back to the pitcher, that kid’s dead. So they switched to BB core, which deadens the bat, but those cost three to five hundred dollars … are you kidding me?.” He added, “I understand they have a pretty good shelf life but that’s five hundred dollars for a freakin’ bat.”
O’Donnell believes that this is only the beginning. He said, “I’ve only recently started seeing myself as a batmaker … I’m graduating after this semester, and then I want to be the emperor of my bat empire; this is what I want to do.” He added, “I want to be a part of baseball, and I understand that wood is my skill set. I’ll never be a baseball player, but I will be a baseball facilitator. I dream of hopefully having a nice big barn someday with a small house attached to it where I can make baseball bats, and [have] a couple of golden retrievers. That’s all I need. And hopefully make my own field of dreams.”
All of Casey’s bats are fully customizable and run from $80 to $120, which is far less than industry leader Amish-run Marucci. For more information on Casey’s prodcuts and to order your own, visit www.odobatco.com