The New Jersey Forest Service's health specialist,Rosa Yoo, stepped off a road at the Round Valley Recreation Area and plunged into the woods to check the status of her patients.
There was a grove of gray husks at the clearing where she came. She suspected that the canopies that painted the landscape in gold and maroon had died.
There are dead ash trees all over the place. It is difficult to find an ash tree that has not been damaged.
She is referring to the emerald ash borer, an insect that has wreaked havoc across North America and left huge patches of dead forest.
Ash is a small part of the continental woodlands. Ash has historically ruled in baseball.
Baseball history has been written with ash bats from Joe DiMaggio's 56-game hitting streak in 1941 to Roger Maris' 61 home runs in 1961.
The ash bats Babe Ruth used weighed 46 ounces. The coffin was made for him by a craftsman. Ted Williams used to go to the factory of Hillerich & Bradsby to get the lumber he wanted for his bats.
Ash is all but extinct as the trees face extinction. This postseason, which spans from early October to early November and began with 12 teams and more than 300 players, may be the first in generations that doesn't have an ash bat.
Many of the bats Hillerich & Bradsby produced went to major leaguers. Evan Longoria of the San Francisco Giants is the only one of the company's devotees left.
All Major League Baseball stadiums stopped selling hot dogs. Ash was the material Jack Marucci picked up at the lumber yard to make bats for his son. What other choices would he make?
Marucci said that the staple was the one. I didn't know anything about ash bats.
Marucci Sports and its sister brand, Victus, make bats for more than half of the players in the big league. None of the Marucci customers who made the playoffs requested ash.
Brad Miller is an example of a few others. The maple bat that Judge used to hit his 62 home runs this season was the same one that he used to hit his first home run.
Pete Tucci tried to locate the last client who came to him looking for ash bats.
Tucci said it was the Brewers catcher. Six ash bats were ordered by him.
It was all done.
The change has been noticed. Tucci was a first round pick of the Toronto Blue Jay in 1996. Maple was gaining in popularity in the late 1990s. He wasn't fond of it.
Tucci said that other guys were liking it. I would always return to ashes.
Tucci was an intuitive baseball hitter. Ash is a softer wood and can be more prone to splintering. The softer ash bats have a "trampoline" effect on the ball when flexed in the barrel.
Tucci said that the grain created a bit of a grooves. The grooves caught the ball a bit more and produced more backspin. I thought I got more performance out of an ash bat than a maple one.
It was different when he started making bats. The first star to use a maple bat was Joe Carter. After Barry Bonds hit 73 home runs with a maple Sam Bat from the Original Maple Bat Corporation, dozens of others followed.
It is also a positive thing. Ash timber was harder to come by due to its eight to 12 growth rings per inch.
One of the dying ashes was hit by a hatchet in the park. A section of bark the size of a pancake was removed by her.
It is not supposed to happen.
The borer is the size of a grain of rice. The forest is covered in the bark of ash trees. The cambium layer is where the eggs are laid and which the larvae feed on. The winged insects come out of the tree and restart the cycle after they've been eaten.
Efforts have been made to slow or stop the progress of the borers. They've been seen as far south as Texas. They were found in Oregon.
The New Jersey Department of Agriculture is trying to control the emerald ash borer by releasing parasitoidwas. The borer is native to Asia and most likely hitched a ride to the US on a container ship.
The trees are dead.
The way nature hangs in there is very resistant. It will be a long time before ash can return to where it was.
Bobby Hillerich admitted that the company was late to appreciate the impact. Louisville Slugger used ash and hickory, a heavier wood that fell out of favor in the 1940's.
Hillerich & Bradsby used to get its ash lumber from mills in Pennsylvania and New York. 40,000 trees a year can be felled to make Louisville Sluggers for 90 cents per board foot.
Hillerich said that they had a fantasy that the insects would be contained. It was probably a few years later that we realized this wasn't what we thought.
Hillerich said that the company still makes 350,000 to 350,000 ash bats a year.
They are usually used for protection or for Halloween.
Hillerich thinks maple would be the most popular wood wielded by major leaguers because of its consistency and firmness. If bat makers were able to maintain their supply, the demand for ash would have remained strong.
Hillerich said that they had to talk to some guys. We couldn't be certain of the supply of ash we were getting. We don't know if it was the quality wood that they've been using.
Birch has gained a bigger foothold in the void. It has its flaws as well.
The players don't like the sound.
The director of the Rutgers Urban Forestry Program is more optimistic about the future of ash trees than most people. A new generation of ash trees might take root after the borer has killed the old trees.
Baseball is at the end of an era.
It will most likely be at least a generation before we see ash bats again. I think we will still want ash bats if we have kids playing baseball.
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