Local: Leaving A Mark
At 6-foot, 235 pounds and a body built like a linebacker, Kyle Schwarber doesn't need a lot of help when it comes to crushing home runs.
The Chicago Cubs' rookie took center stage this year with five long balls, which set a Cubs record for most home runs in the post season.
It wasn't just the majestic home runs Schwarber slammed for Chicago, it was his flat annihilation of the Rawlings - one of which ended up atop the new right field scoreboard - after Schwarber took St. Louis' Kevin Siegrist deep in the seventh inning of Game 5 of the NLDS, helping the Cubs to their first division title since 2003.
The ball is still there - enclosed in a case - and the remnants of Schwarber's destruction across major league baseball diamonds won't be soon forgotten either.
With arms like tree trunks, the one constant about Schwarber's swing was he always got good wood on the baseball.
That wood - just so happened to come from southern Illinois.
Kyle Drone, who owns and operates Dinger Bats in Ridgway, has been a bat supplier for Schwarber for the past couple of years and said there was a lot of gratification in seeing what Schwarber was able to do in the postseason, using one of his bats.
"I get some gratification out of any of my pro players using them because they are playing at the highest level and anybody no matter what field you are in, whether it be sales or marketing or journalism, you always want to be at the top, and having my bats being used at the highest level is what really drives me and for Schwarber doing it, and having the success in hitting the home runs that he's hitting, just makes it that much more special."
Schwarber is on a short list of guys like Pittsburgh's Starling Marte and Sean Rodriguez, along with Tampa Bay's Asdrubal Cabrera and Cleveland's Giovanny Urshela who currently swing Drone's bats.
Schwarber's "KS-10" custom fit bat that weighs in at 31 ounces and is 34 inches long, is made of maple, that Drone said comes from northeast Pennsylvania and up into Canada.
In Drone's wood-faced facility in Ridgway, past the layers of wood chips, dust and debris, lies the quintessential mom-and-pop operation.
It's Drone and about five other guys - who end up carving out nearly 25,000 baseball bats a year - that are far from where they want to be. Drone got the idea to start the company in 2002 while working for the Chicago Cubs' AA affiliation, The West Tenn Diamond Jaxx in Jackson, Tenn.
"I had a bunch of friends on that team that were always complaining about the wood - the quality of wood they were getting - and I just kind of threw it out there to them. Because of my dad's background ... he's been able to do just about anything and I knew if anyone would be able to do it, he would be able to help me. So I just threw it out to him and it was just kind of to help some friends out, and ended up being a viable business after that."
Long before the first bat was ever made, and the company - appropriately named Dinger bats - came to life, a brainstorming session is where the whole dream for Drone started.
"It's the first thing I wrote down," Drone said. "When I decided we were going to be in the bat business and had my brainstorming paper, it was the first thing I wrote down, and after 10-plus pages, that's what we went back to.
"Heck, I had a name and a logo two months before we ever made the first bat."
If there's anything more prophetic in life, it's that when Schwarber puts bat on ball, it's got Dinger written all over it, like a stamp of approval from southern Illinois.
Michael Dann covers prep and college sports for the Harrisburg Daily Register. Follow him on Twitter: @spydieshooter.