Reach the major league baseball otherwise

Photo Joel Lemay

Benoît Rioux

Saturday, 24 march 2018 14:59

UPDATE
Saturday, 24 march 2018 15:03

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MONTREAL | barely got into the local production of the neighbourhood of Hochelaga-Maisonneuve, a delivery person comes to retrieve parcels: one will take the direction of Japan, to a player of the Nippon-Ham Fighters of Hokkaido, the other will be in Scottsdale, Arizona, to serve a young striker who dreams in major league baseball.

Photo Joel Lemay

Owner and founder of the company Märk Lumber, the Quebecers Marc Bourgeois is already at work since the morning and expects to return to the house after dark. During this day a little bit insane, he should be able to produce a fifty sticks.

“For me, it’s pretty simple, I see it exactly as a career player, he said. It is necessary to climb the ladder one at a time and you have to put the effort to get there.”

Photo Joel Lemay

Bourgeois is well placed to draw a comparison. He himself has been a hope of the Diamondbacks of Arizona. The young man, a native of Granby has long been a hitter feared, but finally, after having launched his own company sticks it will eventually reach the highest peaks.

Sticks approved

Even if Märk Lumber was founded in just three years, the company has already received its certification of major league baseball, in January last, so that the product can be used.

The Quebecer Russell Martin, Toronto Blue Jays, mania besides the product, but several other athletes of renown are interested in across the various teams. There are Yasmani Grandal, Rougned Odor, Joey Gallo, and Martin Prado, to name a few.

Photo Joel Lemay

“Honestly, to see a guy like Russell to use the sticks, to see it hit hits and circuits, it makes me almost as happy as if it was me that had hit it, just entrust Bourgeois. It is a different feeling, but it is a sense of accomplishment. A circuit hit them with your product, that you have sanded by hand and that you have painted, this is the cherry on the sundae.”

A delivery to the olympic Stadium

The last few weeks have been particularly responsible for the contractor, who has visited more than a dozen organizations in major league baseball in Florida and Arizona, during the training camps.

In the San Diego Padres, he met the idol of his youth, Mark McGwire, truly, the king of the long ball became a coach. Obviously, it has found particularly interesting the name of the product: “Märk Lumber”.

The camp of the Jays, in Dunedin, Kendrys Morales also hit very long circuits by testing the sticks in training. This was enough to convince him to put a hand on a few rods for the next few months.

Photo Joel Lemay

Bourgeois will provide himself the delivery to the olympic Stadium, this Monday, the time to take a small break from its production, a few steps away.

A doubt erased

Marc Bourgeois was the most powerful hitter of his team in 2012, with its 10 circuits in 92 games with the Silver Hawks of South Bend, when he took the decision, before the start of the following season, leaving baseball affiliate.

Several reasons have influenced: a thumb damaged, a motivation eroded by conditions of life not very obvious at the level A. Then, with a bachelor’s degree in your pocket at the age of 23, he had this fear of getting nothing if the adventure had to end badly.

“I finished my second season on professional with five fractures in the thumb,” he says. I had been reach by a pitch. The season had been, but then I spent three months in rehab in Arizona, and then I had a difficult period mentally. I wanted to move on to something else and have a more normal life.”

This is only a few years later that the former hope of the Diamondbacks of Arizona was plagued by doubt, wondering how far he could go. Would it be able to reach the big leagues as his former teammates Ender Inciarte and Keon Broxton? Despite the doubts that fade, the answer will never come.

Photo Joel Lemay

“I get there in another way, and honestly, that to me takes away a little of this questioning where I wondered what would have happened,” says the owner and founder of the company Märk Lumber. It seems that it helps me to move on to something else. Now, I am at peace with my decisions. I wasn’t before.”

Passionate about baseball

Rather than putting the baseball side, Bourgeois was to reconnect with his passion.

Photo Joel Lemay

“After three years and three different jobs, I was not happy,” he remembers. This is where I told myself that I had to go back to baseball. When I played, it was the stick that I care and I always enjoyed working the wood too. I had the idea of making sticks. Everyone thought I was crazy, and it actually took a few months before finding the right recipe to make a good stick.”

Märk Lumber is born in 2015. The ascension to the major league baseball, without a long detour by bus to Bowling Green, Lansing and other locations in the american Midwest, has been meteoric.