Good Wood: Companies take great pride in crafting bats out of New England lumber

There's certainly no lack of choice when it comes to wood bats. (Mark Cunningham/MLB Photos via Getty Images)

The start of the baseball season brings back the sound baseball fans swoon for: the crack of the bat. Look it up; there’s a video on YouTube that is over three minutes long about the loudest crack of the bat. A book about the history of baseball on the radio has the title “Crack of the Bat: A History of Baseball on the Road.”

That familiar and famous sound only comes from one source, however: wooden baseball bats.

That sound is just one of a number of reasons to use a wooden bat.

“At the end of the day, Major League Baseball and anything leading to it is using a wood bat,” said Kevin Rothwell of Sam Bat. “To continue being true to the historic nature, if you want to play baseball at the highest level, you should be swinging a wood bat.”