new gol

Chris Corso, CEO

A Bay Area native, Chris was a college standout at Cal State University, Hayward (East Bay) in 1993-94.  At the Division 2 level at CSUH, Chris is at or near the top of almost every major offensive category in the schools’ history and was twice selected as a 1st team all NCAC conference player and was the Pioneers  MVP in 1993.  In just two seasons with the Pioneers he amassed 129 hits, 21 homeruns, 26 doubles, 86 run batted in and a .343 career batting average in 376 at bats.  In 1994 the Florida Marlins picked him up as an undrafted free agent.  Arm injuries forced an early retirement in 1996 with a brief comeback in 1998 with the Western Warriors of the independent professional Western Baseball League.  After retiring from professional baseball in 1998, Chris spent time as a catching and hitting coach for his alma mater (CSU, Hayward) and was a hitting and catching instructor for “America’s Game” and the “California Baseball Academy” baseball instruction organizations.  In 1999 Chris founded his own wood baseball bat manufacturing company, “Sandlot Stiks”.   The brand gained popularity in the professional ranks and received Major League approval for use in the 2001-2003 seasons.  Sandlot Stiks supplied bats to many Major and Minor League players including Barry Bonds, Benito Santiago, Eric Chavez, Calvin Murray and Scott Posednik.  Since 2003 Chris has been teaching hitting and catching to players of all ages at Mac’s Professional Baseball School.  In 2008 Chris returned to the field as hitting coach for Manager Jon Macalutas’ Chico Outlaws of the independent professional Golden Baseball League; then made an unexpected return to the field as a player for them.  In his first professional at bat in 10 years, Chris successfully reached base by driving a single into right field.  He finished the season at age 37 with nine games played and drove in nine runs with seven hits including a homerun and triple.  As a hitting coach and player, Chris helped the Outlaws to their best offensive season (2008) in the teams’ five year history.

 

Jon Macalutas, CFO

CFO Jon Macalutas was first introduced to Sandlot Stiks as a player for the Chico Heat in 2001. He liked the product so much he bought into the company.

A Cal Poly industrial engineering graduate, Macalutas has owned and operated Mac's Professional Baseball School in Chico, Ca since 2003.

Career leader in games played (208), hits (243), doubles (48), and hit by pitches (38) at Cal Poly San Louis Obispo. A non-drafted free agent in 1996. Got to the double AA level in the minor leagues. Career .290 hitter in professional baseball. Amassed 777 career pro hits. 448 runs scored, 160 doubles, 58 home runs, 391 RBI, 116 stolen bases, and 300 walks to 279 strikeouts. Has been involved in baseball for the past 30 years. Entering his 16th year of playing, teaching, coaching, or managing at the professional level. Has taught over 30,000 private baseball and softball lessons along with hundreds of camps for every age level. Available for lessons in all areas of the game.


Quality Control

Beginning in 2009, Major League Baseball required all its approved bat manufacturers place an ink spot on Maple and Birch bats. This spot will be found on the handle 12" above the knob of the bat on the tangential or face grain in order to reveal the slope of grain. Additionally, labels will now be placed on the longitudinal axis or side grain for the Maple and Birch bats. When the ink is placed on the wood it will bleed into the wood along the grain fibers revealing the grain direction. If the slope of grain runs more than 3 degrees from parallel to the axis of the bat, it should not be considered for use in MLB. Although Sandlot Stiks has been approved for use in MLB in the past, the new MLB approval fees and insurance requirements have eliminated our desire to become MLB approved at this time, instead we will pass our quality products on to the rest of the baseball world. For your inspection we will apply the MLB suggested ink dot on all our Maple and Birch bats. This will insure you have a top quality wood bat. Sandlot Stiks will conduct ongoing studies to help combat violent multi-piece and unsafe breakage of wood bats.

Sandlot Stiks is Back!

Sandlot Stiks were approved for use in Major League Baseball from 2001-2003, at the time operating as Sandlot Stiks Professional Baseball Bats Inc.  In 2004 with Sandlot Stiks on the verge of making a major impact in the wood bat market, MLB imposed a new set of compliance rules for bat manufacturers which included an umbrella style insurance policy in the amount of $12,000,000 to be carried by all MLB approved bat manufacturers.  The policy was to encompass and protect MLB and all its entities and carried a heavy price tag upwards of $30,000 per year.  Add to that a $10,000 per year administrative fee for MLB approval, Sandlot Stiks progress were put to a halt and the company nearly shut down entirely.  With manufacturing limited to local business,  Sandlot Stiks lost approximately 90% of its business due to the loss of MLB approval.

“With all our money tied up into wood and supplies for the MLB orders which were ultimately canceled after our production had started, we were left in a huge hole to dig ourselves out of "; stated Chris Corso founder of Sandlot Stiks.   It appeared to be a tactic to eliminate small bat manufacturers from doing business with MLB. 

Corso eventually did get out of the hole left from the MLB approval fiasco but decided to shut down his operation.  The MLB mandatory policy was cut in half with the help of Corso’s legal team from Hoge, Fenton, Jones and Appel in Pleasanton, CA, but left Corso out of work regardless.

Several years later, after the 2008 MLB season which saw wood baseball bats, more specifically Maple bats, breaking in a dangerous manner, MLB hired forestry experts to determine the cause of the violent multi piece breakage, shelling out $140,000 for the testing on over 2000 broken bats collected throughout the 2008 season.  Without skipping a beat MLB bumped the insurance policy requirements and administrative fees back to their original ransoms for 2009; again eliminating many small bat companies from doing business with MLB.

Corso says he will not seek MLB approval anytime soon; however his company will conform to the new MLB rules regarding Maple bats.   “It just doesn’t make sense to spend more money than we will make in sales to MLB right now just to be approved by them.   However; after careful consideration we will conform to MLB’s new rules regarding Maple bats.  We can take the money we save by not being approved by MLB and buy more high quality timber to sell to the rest of the world.  I have devoted the majority of my life to baseball and supported MLB as a fan, professional baseball player and approved bat manufacturer myself.  It was always my intention to provide a better product for those who made their living playing the game.  My bad experiences with "pro quality" wood bats as a professional baseball player are what founded the basis for forming my company.  However; after years of being in the game at all levels I have found that MLB is not the same as the sport I once played and supported.  MLB is a big business, and they are weeding out who they want to do their business with.  That's fine, I'd rather have Sandlot Stiks approved by the rest of the world than just MLB.  If at some point we are willing and able to conform to MLB's approval policies we will.

MLB has asked that it’s approved bat manufacturers place the label of the bat on the vertical grain or longitudinal axis of Maple bats because they say this is the weaker side.  This of course goes against 100+ years of traditional belief that the longitudinal axis is the stronger of the two sides.   MLB says through the studies performed on bat breakage in 2008 it has been proven Maple bats will have a tendency to break less violently when hit on the flat grain or Tangential axis side.  In addition the strength of the Maple wood is up to 30% stronger on that Axis. 

Ash wood is ring porous and has an open grain, which gives the layers of wood a tendency to separate if struck against the tangential or face grain. So hitting on the longitudinal grain makes more sense.   Maple is a diffuse porous wood and has very uniform structure and tight grain.  Under a microscope it looks like a 3D traffic grid.  The fibers of Maple are short and rigid, thus the main concern with maple is that it often breaks in half or multiple pieces causing very dangerous spear like projectiles.

“If it means having a safer product, we’ll conform to the new MLB rules too” says Corso.  “We have always been very discrete in choosing a straight grain for all our game bats because this makes for a stronger bat.  Since our inception in 1996, we have enforced a strict quality control incorporating most importantly the Zero slope of grain idea for our lumber.  We have always made sure our suppliers either Split our billets or saw for grain and fiber straightness with very little to no slope of grain.  Multi-piece fractures a far more likely to occur when the wood rays or fiber direction is at an angle or not parallel to the center of the wood.  When hardwood logs are split, they will split along the direction of these fibers creating the straightest possible grain in both the longitudinal and tangential directions.  When logs are sawn, they may be sawn at an angle to those fibers of the tangential axis creating a weak fiber direction.  An ink dot will now be placed on the Maple and Birch bat handles at the 12" mark.  The ink will bleed into the fibers of the grain and run along them revealing the direction or slope of grain”.

“For Maple wood especially since it has a natural tendency to be more brittle than Ash, Birch and Beech due to its short rigid fibers, the grain in both directions need to run as parallel as possible to the center of the piece of wood for the entire length of the bat.  This will insure optimal strength of the wood.  Even though we were aware of this in the past and made sure our bats had strict grain standards, we were not aware of the strength difference between the two directions of grain.   All our new Maple and Birch bats will have labels on the longitudinal grain, but will keep the labels on the traditional face grain for Ash bats due nature of the wood itself."

Sandlot Stiks will now offer their high quality bats to the rest of the baseball world focusing mainly on independent professional leagues and amateurs alike.  “We want to try to service our customers better than ever before.  Unfortunately when we were left hanging by MLB, the rest of our customers felt the repercussions.  We had a hard time filling some of the orders placed at the same time MLB pulled the rug out from under us.  We simply ran out of products because we could not afford to pay for more wood to complete the orders.  It was like being in a sinking boat and not being able to bail out fast enough.  That was a terrible time for me!” said Corso “But, now we're ready to do it right and get the customers back.”

 

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