Major League Baseball’s Players’ Weekend begins Friday, an annual event meant to celebrate the athletes “beyond the bases.” Over the years, we’ve seen players wear off-the-wall jerseys with nicknames on the back and customized cleats, bats and gloves. This Players’ Weekend, MLB has seen more than 400 submissions of customized bats, more than ever.

A large portion of the bats are supplied by Victus, a bat manufacturer that began in New Jersey in 2012. CBS Sports spoke to Doug Trimble, the company’s operations manager, about what we’ll see this coming Players’ Weekend, as well as some of the customized bats we’ve seen in the past.

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Gavin Sheets of the Padres will have man’s best friend on his bat this weekend.
Victus

First things first, the art on every single bat is customized by one person. 

“We have an in-house artist, his name is Bruce Tatem, he goes by ‘The Bat King,'” said Trimble. “He hand-paints all those bats. They’re completely airbrushed. It’s a common misconception that these come out of a machine. He’s doing probably over 400 custom bats for Players’ Weekend.

“We do a bunch around jewel events. We did a ton of stuff around the All-Star Game, the Home Run Derby, (Bryce) Harper’s corn bat that he used in the Field of Dreams game, and then this weekend you’ll see them all over the place.” 

The Bat King’s Instagram account is a treasure trove of the bats he’s made, from Juan Soto to James Wood, as well as videos of him creating his art.

Often, Trimble said, the players aren’t quite sure what they want to do yet, but Victus will work with them through team personnel. 

“Sometimes we internally come up with something creative for them — if it’s something they’re known for, a moment that’s already happened, a correlation with something that we think would be cool storytelling,” Trimble told CBS Sports. “Half of it is the players reaching out if they want something specific. We’ll give some players some options to pick from as well. If they don’t have a specific idea, they could choose from a select amount of custom bats we’ve provided the clubhouse manager.” 

MLB must approve all customized bats, ideally by a deadline, but Trimble admitted that his company has gotten requests as late as this week.

“An idea will pop in their head and they’ll just remember that it’s Players’ Weekend and send us three ideas they wanna do,” Trimble said. “Or they just got new cleats and they want the bat to go with the cleats or something like that. A lot of it, honestly, is last minute, so (Tatem)’s in the heat of it right now.”

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Victus is supplying hundreds of custom bats for 2026 Players Weekend.
Victus

Some ideas are rejected, he conceded, but typically over licensing issues rather than subject matter.

“We’ve gotten stuff rejected before, and it’s usually stuff that is too close to other company IPs,” Trimble said. “Like, a lot of players just want this brand on the bat or a bat that looks like a soda can (like a Mountain Dew can). If it’s stuff that’s completely third-party branding, MLB will nix that.” 

As for any favorites, there are a few viral moments that baseball fans will likely remember. 

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Phillies infielder Bryson Stott swung a pencil at the 2023 Little League Classic.
Getty Images

“The first time the pencil hit the field, Bryson Stott used that in the Little League Classic, and it just went insane, viral across the whole nation,” Trimble said. “That one was so cool just because it just looks like a jumbo pencil on TV. It looks like the actual object, so it was putting people in a craze. They thought it was edited because it looked so real. That was the first time something felt iconic.” 

Trimble also bragged about Bobby Witt Jr.’s Pablo Sanchez bat, from the video game Backyard Baseball, which the Royals star used to hit a home run.

As for some of the best players to work with? 

“Julio Rodriguez always gives us cool ideas, Bryson Stott always gives good ideas, and he’s great about using the custom stuff,” Trimble said. “Obviously, Bryce Harper is all about it, the storytelling, and he likes custom stuff for the moment and stuff that correlates for the moment that the fans can engage with, like the corn bat at Field of Dreams — stuff that’s completely on brand that will ultimately bring kids and maybe people who aren’t fans to the game. Things that hit social media. That’s the cool part about Players’ Weekend. It brings people to watch even if they aren’t usually watching baseball, and it’s a new thing that they can look at and interact with.”  

The bats, by far, are the viral success of Players’ Weekend, and we have Victus and The Bat King to thank for many of them.

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