Local artist Aaron Kizer has partnered with Dinger Bats — a manufacturer that crafts bats for players at all levels, including the Major Leagues — to hand-paint three separate exclusive series of 10 bats for art and sports collectors alike.
Kizer and Dinger Bats will release the first edition of bats on April 1, Major League Baseball’s Opening Day. Kizer will sign and number each bat. When combined with the other two releases, the set will create a finished piece. Still, Kizer said, they’re just as awesome individually.
The home run partnership has multiple goals. The first is to generate excitement for the collector’s edition bat series. The second is to have an artist-designed bat for future use in the big leagues.
“What we’re putting out is unlike anything I’ve ever seen,” Kizer said. “I Googled and searched to make sure what we’re doing isn’t like anything that’s ever been done before.”
Shane Shepherd, director of business development for Dinger Bats, lives in Owensboro and said the bat industry has been trending toward custom bats. Major League Baseball has several restrictions on gameday bats, but there are some exceptions when the league relaxes its guidelines.
He referenced the Home Run Derby, the Little League World Series partnership game in Williamsport, and the Players’ Weekend as some of the opportunities they have to offer their MLB players a custom bat.
“We’ve been in Major League Baseball for 16 years now, so we’re slowly moving into a larger market,” Shepherd said. “Some of the bigger bat companies have hired artists or graffiti artists to take it a step further for their players. … We were looking for something different, with someone with amazing talent, and that’s where Aaron came in.”
Shepherd described the current custom bat scene as “cartoonish” or graffiti-based. Dinger Bats’ recent attempt at customization was an American Flag graphic for Kyle Schwarber during the Home Run Derby. Shepherd said though “it was awesome,” they still wanted more.
“We feel like Aaron brings a completely different artistic style that we’re going to be able to use with Jason Heyward for the Dodgers, Curtis Meade for the Tampa Bay Rays, and some of our younger players who are really getting involved with their own bats,” he said. “We’re also excited for him to do a portrait on one of the bats because we know that’s his main go-to, so that’s also important.”
While the first run of bats is more for public consumption, Shepherd and Kizer alike look forward to seeing a big leaguer swing a hand-painted Dinger Bat one day.
The Dinger Bats headquarters is in Ridgway, Illinois, roughly 80 miles west of Owensboro. The partnership with Kizer is ideal, Shepherd said.
“The kicker for us is that Aaron is local,” Shepherd said. “Major League Baseball will literally give me a 2-week timeframe to submit an artist’s bat rendering once they notify us a player will be competing in the Home Run Derby.”
In that time span, he said it would be logistically challenging to work with an artist from Los Angeles or Miami while still appealing to the MLB.
“Now, we’re in a situation where Aaron’s in my office, and we can begin having conversations ahead of time about what we might do if a player makes it to the Derby,” he said. “That way, we’ll have an idea, and when we get the green light, he can just paint.”
Bat 1 of 1 in the first collection will initially be available on June 21, during Kizer’s art show — title Yousuf — at the Owensboro Convention Center.
The bats will vary from Kizer’s typical portraits seen across town.
“It’s very abstract,” he said. “When you hang all 3 of them, it will create the Dinger logo. It took me a while to come up with the design. It’s like I always say, ‘20 percent of the work takes 80 percent of the time.’”
He said he threw ideas around for some time, creating several designs before finally landing on one.
“This was one of those concepts where I just threw a ton of ideas around until I came up with one that, aesthetically, when I looked at it, I felt good about,” he said. “I came up with something that gave me an emotion, a feeling like I had done something right.”
After knocking this collaboration out of the park, Kizer and Shepher said they plan to create additional opportunities down the road. For more information or to inquire about purchasing one of the bats, visit Kizer’s website here.
