Wisconsin-Based Maple Bat Company, RockBats, Cheers for the New 2009 Bat Supplier Regulations Announced by Major League Baseball

Monona, WI, December 17, 2008 --(PR.com)-- Roland Hernandez, former Research Engineer with the USDA Forest Service, Forest Products Laboratory, and Founder of the maple baseball bat company RockBats, said: “This is both a sad and joyous day for us at RockBats. After 2 years of being one of the 32 MLB-approved bat suppliers, we exhausted our efforts to convince players that face-grain contact was the recommended orientation for maple bats. Today marks a great day in our history, because MLB has adopted Forest Service recommendations on wood grading that will require all MLB-approved bat suppliers to orient their logos for face-grain contact. This change will make bats more durable and safer for the teams, players, and fans."

"RockBats has been advocating face-grain contact since 2004, and trademarked this as FORCE Technology(TM) in 2006. Sadly, our technology never grew wings, and unless we get enough professional players and teams requesting our bats – we cannot justify pursuing MLB certification in 2009. We’ve always known that RockBats were The best hard maple bat available in the professional wood bat industry, and today confirms that fact," Hernandez said.

RockBats will be catering to high school, college, and amateur baseball leagues in 2009, with the development of a new all-wood laminated composite baseball bat. The all-wood composite is stronger than any solid-wood bat available today. This laminated RockBat will (again) offer a technology that makes the use of all-wood baseball bats safer for teams, players, and fans.

Roland Hernandez will also be offering his wood bat consulting service to amateur and professional teams directly. "The wood bat industry still operates in a trial-and-error method for introducing bat shapes to players. It is our objective to change this process into an engineering-design process," Hernandez said.

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