LH grad Marucci a true success story
Submitted photo
Laurel Highlands graduate Jack Marucci is the head athletic trainer at Louisiana State University and is the creator of Marucci wooden baseball bats.
Submitted photo
Pittsburgh Pirates outfielder Corey Dickerson models his Marucci bat that is the creation of Laurel Highlands graduate Jack Marucci.
Laurel Highlands graduate Jack Marucci is a true American success story.
Marucci parlayed his love of sports into a career in athletic training and a company that is the talk of Major League Baseball.
Shady Side Inn was built by Marucci’s father and aunts, and his family ran the business from 1937 to 1987. His parents wanted Jack and his siblings to “get out and experience the world” rather than take over the family business.
“The whole family was into sports,” Marucci stated. “My sister played softball at Penn State, she was 10 years younger than all of us. My dad liked sports, obviously, and a lot of sports banquets were held at Shadyside. We would check coats as young kids, and I remember these big banquets, and Willie Stargell would come through or Joe Paterno, and it was kind of neat to see some of those guys.”
“I played basketball and baseball, but I wasn’t good enough. My love of sports got me into athletic training.”
After graduating from Laurel Highlands High School in 1982, Marucci headed to Morgantown, West Virginia. He graduated from West Virginia University in 1986 with a bachelor’s degree in athletic training, and worked in the NFL in training with the Cleveland Browns in 1985 and the Tampa Bay Buccaneers in 1987. He also worked as a graduate assistant trainer at the University of Alabama from 1986 to 1988, earning his master’s degree in athletic training there.
Marucci has been the head athletic trainer at Louisiana State University since 1996, overseeing athletic training for two NCAA national champion football teams at LSU and a third while serving as an assistant athletic trainer at Florida State University in 1993.
The athletic training career has been a success story on it’s own, but his name is now synonymous with crafting wooden baseball bats.
Marucci’s son Gino, who was 7 at the time, asked him for a wooden bat with his name on it in 2002. Marucci failed to find any bat companies that made bats small enough for his son.
He bought a secondhand lathe for $88 and carved Gino a 27-inch bat. It wasn’t long before Gino’s teammates and opponents wanted Marucci made wood bats, and what had started as simply a bat for his son blossomed into the top bat company in Major League Baseball.
“The best class I ever took was shop class with Mr. Hess in junior high at Laurel Highlands,” Marucci said. “That’s one of the best classes I’ve ever taken, it’s the most beneficial. I remembered how to use that wood lathe.”
The story of Marucci Sports is really remarkable.
“I went to St. Louis for a trainer’s convention,” Marucci recalled. “I connected with Eduardo Perez, who I knew from Florida State. He told me to bring a bat, he said he was going to use it and sneak it in.
“That’s where Perez introduced me to Barry Larkin, and he also introduced me to Albert Pujols, who had me make a copy of his bat and he used it in batting practice. We made Larkin a bat and we went over to Minute Maid Park in Houston. My son Gino carried the bat in, we went behind the dugout and the bat boy comes running over and gets the bat.
“Larkin gives thumbs up and puts on the pine tar and he took batting practice with it. It was the third inning, he gets up and it was the first time anyone got a hit with a Marucci bat and we got to see it.”
The rest is history. Marucci was in contact with current and former baseball players at LSU as the school’s head athletic trainer, and LSU alum and former MLB pitcher Kurt Ainsworth persuaded Marucci to launch a company in 2002 that crafted handmade bats for major leaguers.
Unlike other apparel and equipment manufacturers, instead of sponsoring athletes, Marucci has brought in players as company owners and advisers to product development. Notable members of the Advisory Board include Pujols, David Ortiz, Buster Posey, and Andrew McCutchen.
The Marucci bat has become a staple in major league clubhouses.
“Jack, in over the last eight or nine years, has had a major impact on MLB and who’s using his bats,” Pirates clubhouse manager Scott Bonnett said. “We went from having a few players to now having over 50 or 60 percent using the Marucci bat.”
“Marucci has made a huge imprint on the market,” Pirates shortstop Jordy Mercer offered. “My first batch of Marucci bats was like in 2010 and people kept saying this was an up-and-coming company. I’ve toured their facility in Baton Rouge and it has just taken off like crazy. They are one of the best and probably 75 percent of the league uses Marucci.”
Customer service is a big reason for the growth of Marucci Sports.
“I think it’s a good company and the turn around with bats when you order them the turnaround is really good,” Bonnett stated. “That’s a key thing. Customer service is important and they’ve got a good team at the company and they know how to work with these players.”
“It’s about the customization for the player to every exact detail,” Pirates outfielder Corey Dickerson said. “It’s about quality, you get so many bats and the quality of the number of bats you get is up there and that’s what you look for as a player. You can get 12 bats, and only a few are really made good, and Marucci all their bats are produced really well.”
Marucci believes in a quality product.
“We get almost all of our wood from Pennsylvania,” Marucci explained. “We have a wood mill up in Punxsutawney and one up by Bucknell University, and actually some of the milling is done in Hopwood.”
“I order about 100 bats during the season,” Dickerson said. “I only use half of them because if you get 12 bats I might only use five or six of them. The other five or six are used during batting practice. The other six are considered my gamers and it’s just a feel. I listen to them, the sound of them and that dictates if I use them in a game or not.”
Marucci marvels at the growth of the company.
“We’re number one,” Marucci said. “The numbers vary, we also have Victus bats, so were probably with all of that well over 50 percent, the closest to us might be 20 percent. Louisville Slugger has never been toppled and fortunately we toppled them.”
Marucci remains close with his family, his mom, sister, Marisa Brnardic, and brothers, Jerry and Jim. His mom just sold the house in Uniontown a couple of months ago, but Marucci still plans periodic visits to Uniontown to visit his aunts.
“You always go back and appreciate what you have,” Marucci said.
George Von Benko’s “Memory Lane” column appears in the Monday editions of the Herald-Standard. He also hosts a sports talk show on WMBS-AM radio from 10 a.m. to noon on Saturdays.