Shaping his success
Wayne Osborne's creativity took a swing the moment his father brought home a wood lathe.
A machine bought as a gift for his mother, Karen, in the winter of 2024 now features an extension and platoons with Osborne's passion for creating wooden baseball bats. With the idea and assistance from his father, Scott, the work has paid off for Wayne, as he uses these bats in live Berwick Junior American Legion baseball games.
"Naturally, I like baseball a lot, of course," Osborne said. "We thought about making bats, but after my dad said something, we got a 4x4 in the barn and turned it down to a bat shape. It just took off from there. This year, my skills improved to use [the bats] in games."
Scott, a shop teacher at Central Columbia, still helps Wayne by ordering wood from Maine — with maple, birch and ash ranging in price from $20-$40 — and getting started on new bats in the family barn. Osborne, though, has everything else down, such as markings on the beams, sanding, and the final touches, including staining the barrels a maroon color.
The Benton High School junior prefers hitting with those types of wood, saying they're all high quality.
"Maple stays rigid like a metal bat whereas ash will flex and spring back, hitting the ball farther," Osborne said. "Birch is kind of somewhere in the middle of those two. All three hit really well."
Osborne will also design bats using oak from around the family land, but isn't as inclined to use them in games. When it comes to designing bats, Osborne says the steps are the same, regardless of the wood type, and it takes 3-4 hours. When finished, he tests them off a tee or by tossing a ball in the air to himself.
He has designed roughly 10 bats to date, logging all the information in a binder to remember what he likes and dislikes about his craft.
"I record the specifications, such as diameter and where it tapers," Osborne said. "I record it on a piece of paper and keep it away so I can repeat the design over and over again. It allows me to learn from the mistakes and successes. I mark which ones are good for games and others that I don't like because the barrels or handles are too thin or too thick."
The Tigers baseball player doesn't fiddle around too much with weight distribution, such as torpedo bats, but says, "I might have to experiment with that at some point." Since he is the one usually swinging the bats and knows what he likes, he often doesn't test new knobs, such as the axe or puck handles one would see on a nightly MLB broadcast.
Instead, he likes to play around with different bat weights, ranging from 29 ounces to 40 ounces, a weight he swings in the on-deck circle. He finishes each custom bat with his stamp of approval: etching the finishing touches, including the bat's creation year and the shop's location onto the barrel.
"As the bats started getting nicer, I started taking after other companies and drawing diamonds, first with a pencil and then a wood-burning tool," Osborne said. "All it has is my signature and the bat's height and weight."
Osborne, who is in Benton's agriculture program and is unsure of what he wants to do after high school, says he isn't interested in turning the hobby into a career. As of now, the only other player who uses his bats is high school and Legion teammate Ben Farwell. However, that doesn't mean he won't one day help out a player or family.
"I have thought about selling wooden bats at a fair, market price," Osborne said. "The ones in the store are overpriced. I just wouldn't make it a full-time job or anything. That could change, though."
With that mindset, Osborne's name could be a big hit in Columbia County one day.
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