PORTLAND, Maine — Maine has had its fair share of ties to Major League Baseball over the years, but now, two companies from the state are looking to innovate America's Pastime.
Dove Tail Bats has been manufacturing bats for the public and for some of the world's top baseball players for years. According to a release, the company produced more than 30,000 bats last year.
On Wednesday, the company revealed its new revolutionary bat scanner at Hadlock Field in Portland.
The scanner uses cutting-edge technology to scan a player's bat from anywhere in the world and data from the scan is sent back to Dove Tail Bats' facility in Shirley, Maine. From there, workers can produce an exact replica and return it to the player in one day.
"It’s a confidence booster to [players], to know they have a company can turn something around so quick with such high quality," Dove Tail Bats Founder Paul Lancisi said.
Livermore Falls-based Newfangled Solutions developed the scanning and production systems for the scanner. Owner Brian Barker said this design and development process began eight years ago.
"The previous way of doing it was with masking tape and calipers and it took an hour and a half to two hours and there were still inaccuracies," he added.
The new scanner can copy the dimensions of a bat to one one-thousandth of an inch and the process takes less than five minutes.
Lancisi said he hopes to have a scanner inside every Major League clubhouse in the near future. The New York Mets will be the first MLB team to use one. MLB stars Pete Alonso and Jeff McNeil, both players from the Mets, use Dove Tail Bats.
"This is a ten-year dream that I’ve had to take Maine technology and bring it into the major league arena," Lancisi said.
Portland Sea Dogs Shortstop Christian Koos also uses Dove Tail Bats, which uses the slogan "Hardest Wood In Baseball."
"[My teamattes] were hitting some balls hard so I had to ask them what they were swinging," Koos said. "It definitely has a stronger feel to it."
Koos added his bat is his "offensive weapon" and having access to the new scanning technology will be a big benefit in case he breaks a bat or wants to make some adjustments during the season.
These Maine companies are looking to innovate a game that's been played in our country for more than a century. In the process, they will showcase locally developed technology, wood products from Maine, and employ local workers.