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Sports

Tucci, Jr. Continues To Knock 'Em Out of the Park [Video]

A new vocation might fulfill Tucci's dream of making it to the Major Leagues...this time as a bat manufacturer. Tucci Lumber Co. opens this Saturday.

Pete Tucci, Jr. needed to get back in the game.

After ten years of running a successful heating and air conditioning business, the former Norwalk High School baseball star and 1996 MLB First Round Draft pick of the Toronto Blue Jays, found himself longing for the game he loved.

“I was working late, long nights, working in the wintertime, answering no-heat calls and coming home late at night,” said Tucci.  “I was getting kind of grumpy and my wife said ‘you know what? You’ve got to get back into baseball somehow.’”

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Encouraged by his wife Amy, the Tuccis came up with the concept of bat manufacturing. Having always tinkered with his bats during his 7-year Minor League career, coupled with an innate skill as a craftsman, the move made sense. And Tucci soon discovered making bats came almost as easy to him as hitting home runs.

“I started off in my garage. My wife bought me a lathe … which I still have … and some wood,” Tucci told Patch.  “And the first night it came I set it up, I made one bat, which I’ve never made before in my life, and it actually came out pretty good. So I thought that I had something here, something that I enjoy doing, and it seemed I was pretty good at it.”

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What started out as a hobby for Tucci, an outlet to satisfy his desire to get back into baseball, soon grew into something bigger.

“I started showing them around to people and they liked them and started ordering them, so now I had a small company as a little side business”, said Tucci. “It wasn’t too long before I couldn’t keep up with the orders making them by hand, so as time got on I started growing a little bit, and I purchased a computerized lathe.”

Thus was born the Tucci Lumber Company.

Now working out of a shop on the corner of Strawberry Hill and Westport Avenues, a home run’s distance away from his old high school, Tucci’s new vocation might just get him another crack at the Major Leagues. Currently providing wood bats for everyone from corporate execs to Little League to wood-bat collegiate conferences and even some independent professional players, Tucci is positioned to make the jump to The Show.

“December of this year is going to be a big month for me getting my Major League certification,” said Tucci. “And hopefully once that takes place I’ll be able to utilize the contacts I made from my playing days to try to take a look at my product.”

This Saturday marks the grand opening of the Tucci Lumber Company. And one of Tucci’s most famous new clients will be on hand to celebrate.

“We’ve got (former Met) Howard Johnson coming who is a big supporter of our company,” Tucci told Patch. “He saw our bats and ordered some for his own son who played in college in a wood bat conference, and he really likes the product, and he is coming down to help out. He’ll be signing autographs from 1pm to about 5pm on Saturday. I think it’s going to be a lot of fun." 

And even though his playing days are behind him, the joy that baseball once brought Tucci is back in his life.

“It’s a release for me. It’s always been a part of my whole life. It’s what I know; it’s what I talk about,” said Tucci. “Anything I did up until now, this was always my number one passion. So now to be able to talk to people about this industry, it’s something that I know a lot about, and I’m having fun doing it.

“It’s like the old saying … if you do what you love, you never work a day in your life. So that’s basically what I’m doing now.”

 

Tucci Lumber Co.

318 Strawberry Hill Avenue

Norwalk, CT 06851

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