The Maple Bat Specialists

Superior Maple From the Start

Most manufacturers work with sawn billets. They're easier to produce, faster to break and get you back sooner. At Viper, we only use hand-split wood billets: which are more labor intensive, harder to break, and have a limited supply. We're banking on your satisfaction and a more environment-friendly approach.

Proven Craftsmanship

Getting the most out of wood has been our sole focus for over 15 years. We do not subsidize them with metal bats, mitts or anything else. They've consistently proven they can stand all on their own.

Wide Selection & Customization

We offer around 150 unique models and compound that with literally hundreds of configurations, ensuring your bat will really be your bat.

Find Your Maple Bat

Our selection can be kind of an intimidating. Want some help figuring out which series is right for you?

Guided Search Browse All

What age group are you shopping for?
(Transition tends to fall around 12-14 years old-- whenever Youth bats are too small and Adult bats are too heavy.)

Adult Youth Transition

Baseball or softball?

Baseball Softball

Do you want something that's all finished and ready to ship, or would you like something you can customize?

Custom Ready to Ship

What quality are you looking for?

Ultra Viper Standard Budget

Reset

Why Maple?

A Brief History

Relatively speaking, maple is a newcomer to baseball, first seen in the 1990’s and, at the time, a far cry from the game's main competitor, Ash. It had an inauspicious start, with manufacturers struggling with how to cut it with acceptable consistency.

Nevertheless, in 2001, when Barry Bonds hit a whopping 73 home runs in a single season with his maple Model 73 lit a fire maple like never before.

Fast forward to 2017 and maple and ash seem to have switched places!

The Trouble With Maple

When it was first introduced, manufacturers found it near-impossible to cut maple with any consistency.

The problem was maple's high moisture content. Traditional kilns could only bring the content to around 15%, leaving lots of room for fluctuation. Then, along came VAC and RF Kilns. With these new technologies, that remaining moisture content was cut in half.

Finally, maple wood billets were open for serious business.

Maple's Nature

The majority of maple bats are made from rock maple or sugar maple. These woods are naturally hard and dense.

The surface hardness of maple is about 20% greater than that of ash.
Maple's density allows players to use smaller bats that have the same overall weight.
Due to being a closed-grain wood, maple is less flexible than ash or birch.
Whereas ash has a clearly visible grain, maple is so tight that it's not as easily seen.
These characteristics make it so a maple bat will not flake or separate the same way as ash, resulting in a longer lasting, more durable wood bat.

Why Viper Maple?

Sounds like a silly question?

A little. On a basic level, we get the same material as many others. Maybe a little better due to professional pickiness, but it's still maple.

Without giving away too many secrets, we have, over the past 15 or so years, developed specialized instructions and processes to maximize quality. These start all the way back at our mills, carry on through storage where we maintain specific environmental controls, and become exhaustive to the point of obsession once we actually start cutting a bat.

(For those truly interested, we go much more in-depth on this subject in our article on Wood Bat Creation.