Jack White Is Making Baseball Bats Now
Jack White never looks happier than when he’s at a baseball game, so, given his love of archaic and handmade designs, it makes sense that he is now in the baseball bat business. Along with Detroit Tigers star second baseman Ian Kinsler, White is now an investor and partner in Warstic, an independent sporting goods company founded by the former minor league ballplayer Ben Jenkins.
Warstic makes wood and metal bats, all of them stamped with its logo and made with a sort of minimal design. Kinsler used a black-on-black maple bat during his first game of the season. He got a base hit and a home run with it, so it did its job.
In a press release, White says:
I discovered the Warstic company through my love of design. I was drawn to what Ben Jenkins was doing at Warstic by the simplicity and harshness of the designs. Most baseball bats and equipment in the sports world do not impress me much, but I think that there is a lot of room to explore aesthetic ideas in just baseball alone that can bring beauty and purpose to the weapons that athletes use to accomplish their goals. This can be accomplished not only through form following function, but also to bring in outsider ideas into the zone of athletics steeped in history and sometimes bogged down by its own weight. Warstic is incredibly inspiring to me in this fashion, and I think we can make beautiful objects for not only professionals, but also young children just beginning to understand how important the tools of the trade are to their passion for competition.
Here are some images of the merchandise:
Somewhere, the guy from the Von Bondies is wondering if this is all a bad dream
