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Jack White Is Investing In Baseball Bats

By Rider Torrance
Published on: 08:39 PST, Apr 18, 2016

Jack White, the rock ‘n’ roll singer-songwriter best known for the band The White Stripes, is now investing in baseball bats.

Jack White and Detroit Tigers second baseman Ian Kinsler are co-investing in the baseball gear company Warstic, according to Rolling Stone. White is an avid baseball fan, and he even once threw a pitch at a Detroit Tigers game. White can regularly be seen attending the team’s games.

Jack White is known for appreciating handmade furniture, musical instruments, and more, so it’s not too surprising he’d take an interest in finely-made baseball bats. This is another passion that adds to the eccentric atmosphere that follows his career.

This isn’t the first time Jack White has decided to invest in a venture that goes beyond the kind of projects most musicians would make time for. White recently teamed up with Shinola, a Detroit brand that makes watches, bicycles, and more, to open a retail store for his record label, Third Man Records. The label has its headquarters in Nashville, Tennessee. The store is in the same building as Shinola’s flagship store, according to the Wall Street Journal.

White is from Detroit, which is why he has spent so much time and energy focusing on projects in the city.

White is currently working on a PBS documentary series with musician T Bone Burnett and actor Robert Redford that focuses on music in the 1920s and how it influenced what music is around today. The series, called American Epic, is set to air in the fall of 2016, according to the Wall Street Journal.

White has done many diverse projects since he began his music career in the late 1980s, and he’s come a long way since growing up in a poor neighborhood in Detroit. White has also started bands like The Dead Weather and The Raconteurs.

There have been rumors the hip-hop artist André 3000 is in the studio recording an album with Jack White. These rumors came about when comedian Chris Rock posted a photo of himself with Jack White and André 3000 and others saying that they were “hard at work on the new André 3000 album,” according to Paste Magazine.

Jack White recently said he hopes the Detroit Tigers will have a winning season this year, and music from The White Stripes was played while the team walked out for their opening day. He’s visited the team during their spring training and is often happy to take photos with the members of the team.

Here’s Jack White’s full statement on investing in the company, from Stereogum.

“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.”

[Photo by Handout/Getty Images]

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