Baseball is an amazing game with a rich history. From its humble beginning in Cooperstown, New York, in 1839, it has come a long way. And in its journey to what it is today, a lot of things changed. Rules were polished, the skill floor was raised, and most importantly, the gear got a massive upgrade.
Back in its early days, baseball bats were not regulated all that much. In fact, hitters had complete freedom in choosing the type of bat they would use. As a result, you’d see all sorts of wood types being used in baseball bats. However, as different manufacturers started getting into the business, the choice of wood became a lot more limited.
So, are baseball bats made out of hickory? While maple and ash wood are what most wooden baseball bats are made from these days, in its earliest years, the sport leaned on hickory to make professional baseball bats.
Yet using a hickory bat these days is practically unheard of. Hickory bats are part of baseball history, but almost no one swings one anymore.
I’ll take a deep dive through the history of baseball bats and help you understand if bats are still made out of hickory today, and why the wood fell out of favor in the first place. Let’s get started.
What is Hickory?
Hickory is a pretty common tree in North American regions. It’s part of the walnut family and is known for its exceptional strength, durability, and shock-absorption capacity. Because of these features, this hardwood is suitable for a wide range of applications.
In fact, hickory wood is still used to manufacture tool handles, axe handles, and furniture pieces. And for a time, it was the primary material used to manufacture wooden baseball bats. It has an impressive combination of stiffness to drive the ball hard and enough flex to make it swingable.
However, the hickory wood baseball bat shouldn’t be confused with the Old Hickory Bat Company brand. I’m saying this because I see a lot of young players make this mistake. Old Hickory Bat Company is a brand that outfits plenty of MLB pros with high-quality maple and birch bats, and I’ll get into that a bit further down.
Now, hickory used to be the wood of choice for a lot of bat manufacturers. These days, though, practically nobody uses it. And I’m sure you’re wondering why.
Why are there no hickory baseball bats?
With the introduction of other wood species to the game, namely ash, and later maple and birch, hickory lost its spot at the top. Hickory is a dense wood, and that density is exactly the problem. A hickory bat cut to match the length and swing weight of a modern 33-ounce ash bat would end up closer to 40+ ounces, which is far too heavy for a hitter to whip through the zone with any real bat speed.
On top of the weight problem, hickory is also pretty stiff, and stiff wood is more prone to shattering on a mishit than wood with a bit more give. Whether you’re an MLB professional or an amateur league player, you don’t want your bat exploding in the middle of an at-bat.
Because of these reasons, hickory bats were slowly pushed out of production once ash, and later maple, proved they could hit just as hard without the extra weight. Today, watching a hickory bat in action is pretty rare, to say the least.
How Long Have Old Hickory Baseball Bats Been in Business?
As I said earlier, Old Hickory Bat Company, the brand, isn’t the one responsible for all the hickory baseball bats out there. And they’re still very much in business, manufacturing high-quality baseball bats for MLB pros and amateurs alike. It’s a common mix-up, so I won’t hold it against you.
Old Hickory Bat Company was founded back in 1999, and it has a pretty exciting legacy of its own. I’m not going to pass up a chance to talk about a top baseball bat brand, so let’s dig in.
Like a lot of great bat brands, Old Hickory started out in a one-car garage, this one in Goodlettsville, Tennessee, just north of Nashville. From those humble beginnings serving a handful of local players, the company has grown into a facility spanning more than 16,500 square feet of manufacturing and showroom space.
Over 200 professional players now swing Old Hickory bats, and the roster includes some of the biggest names in the game today. The brand prides itself on excellent quality control and customer service, and that reputation is a big part of why it’s grown so much.
What makes the brand truly special is that they only work on orders, so the customer or player gets a fresh bat made specifically for them. They don’t cut the wood for a new bat until an order comes in, which means if you buy one, you’re getting a bat that was made pretty recently, not something that’s been sitting on a shelf.
They work primarily with hand-selected maple and birch billets these days. So if you were hoping to land an actual hickory bat by ordering from them, you’re out of luck. But if you want a genuinely high-end, premium wood baseball bat, it’s not a bad brand to go with at all.
Do Any MLB Players Use Hickory Bats?
While hickory baseball bats used to be the definitive choice for MLB pros, nobody swings one today. There are a couple of huge downsides to using hickory over more popular wood species like maple, ash, or birch.
MLB professionals need to be equipped with the best gear to stay competitive. That means the best baseball bats, along with every other piece of equipment that can keep them relevant in the game. So you can’t really blame them for switching to a material that lets them swing faster.
If I had to point to the most famous hickory bat in baseball history, it’s not actually Babe Ruth’s. Ruth is closely tied to ash, and his Louisville Slugger bats from the 1920s, the ones weighing north of 40 ounces, were ash through and through. The hickory bat that gets talked about most is “Black Betsy,” the hickory bat “Shoeless” Joe Jackson swung for most of his career. It was handcrafted from hickory in 1903 and famously darkened with tobacco juice, giving it that iconic black look.
That should give you an idea of just how good these bats could be in the right hands.
These days, in MLB games, the wood species most players go with is maple. It’s a stiff wood with little flex, which lets a player transfer a huge amount of energy on contact. Maple has made up the clear majority of bats in the pros for years now, and that trend has only grown since Barry Bonds’ record-setting 2001 season put maple bats on the map.
Ash wood bats are a distant second in popularity these days, and their numbers have shrunk even further since the emerald ash borer, an invasive beetle, started wiping out ash forests across the northeastern U.S. and Canada. A handful of hitters still special-order ash for its flex and lighter feel, but it’s become a niche choice rather than the default it once was.
Birch wood baseball bats make up the smallest share of the three. This species is softer than the other two but naturally quite durable, and in terms of feel, it sits somewhere between maple and ash.
So, are Baseball Bats made out of Hickory? Do They Make Baseball Bats out of Hickory Wood?
Not anymore. Hickory wood was once a very popular choice for baseball bats. It offers amazing strength and durability and absorbs impact pretty well. But with the emergence of other wood species, hickory’s advantages slowly became irrelevant.
Even though it’s strong, hickory is pretty stiff and heavy. That means, compared to maple and ash, swinging a hickory bat takes more effort, and the energy transfer isn’t as efficient either. If you want to see how wood stacks up against non-wood bat materials too, I broke that down in my wood vs. composite baseball bats guide.
On top of that, hickory bats break more easily than other top-tier wooden baseball bats used today. Because of these limitations, hickory wood isn’t used to craft baseball bats any longer. It’s a chapter that’s better left to the history books.
The Bottom Line
If you dig through the pages of baseball history, you’ll find plenty of fun little facts. You’ll notice how things changed and shifted with time, and how people found better ways to make the game more exciting. The shift in bat material isn’t a big deal for a casual player, but for the pros, it made a real difference.
Baseball, in its current state, is extremely competitive. The skill gap between the top hitter in the league and the one near the bottom of the roster isn’t all that much when you think about it. If a player suddenly decided to start using a hickory bat, it could hamper his performance pretty significantly.
Still, it’s a fun thing to wonder about. If you search around your local stores, at least the ones with a bit of heritage, you might still track down a hickory wood baseball bat. If you want to mess around with one just to get the feel of it, be my guest. But using it in a competitive game isn’t the best idea.
If you’re in the market for a bat that’s actually built for today’s game, I’ve rounded up some solid picks in my guide to the best wood baseball bats, and if you’re curious who’s still making them, check out my rundown of the companies that make wooden baseball bats.
I hope this deep dive into whether baseball bats are made out of hickory gave you something to think about. Good luck!
With 4 years of Division II experience, a .272 career batting average, .410 on-base percentage, and 7 home runs, I’m now in my fifth season. I’ve played baseball since age 3, alongside future MLB Draft picks, and I aim to pursue a career in baseball professionally, be it playing, coaching, or scouting.