Neither of us are big baseball fans but we like factory tours and this tour seemed like it would be very interesting.
The Big Bat was a great beginning to the Louisville
Slugger Factor and Museum.
120 feet long, 9 feet in diameter, 68,000 pounds. Made from carbon steel and hand painted to
look like wood. It is hollow. It was put here October 21, 1995.
It is an exact-scale replica of the model R43, 34” wood
bat, designed to specifications requested by Babe Ruth in the early 1920s.
The Hillerich Family
started out making butter churns. They
turned their first pro bat in 1884.
Tickets for the museum and
factory tour are $16 ($15 senior, over 60).
There is a lot to see, plus you get a great souvenir after the tour.
We had a little time
before our tour started to start looking at the large museum.
In this area you can put
on gloves and hold bats that were actually used by the players. There is at least one bat from every major
league team. You can hold a bat that
Mickey Mantle used or Derek Jeter. There
were a lot of famous people on this wall.
There are a lot of bats
displayed but other things to look at too.
In 1927, Babe used, and notched, this Louisville
Slugger bat for 21 of his record-setting 60 home runs that year.
While waiting for our tour
we watched a hand turning demonstration.
We got to hold a lot of
bats.
There are all weights and
lenghts of bats. A pro bat can be as
heavy as you want but it has to weigh at least 2 pounds.
From 1942-45 Hillerich &
Bradsby made M1 Carbine gunstocks out of hickory wood for the US Armed
Forces.
They averaged 1800 gunstocks per
day for a total of more than 1.5 million.
The displays are very nice
and easy to see.
Ty Cobb
Lou Gehrig
Our tour started with a
short movie showing the forests and mills where every Louisville Slugger bat
begins.
There were no photos
allowed on the factory floor but there are large windows outside the factory
where you can take some pictures.
Only the billet’s are sent
to the factory from the mill.
There are a couple of
different ways to cut out the billet.
Method #1 (on the left) is
to use a special guided boring machine that extracts billets directly from an
intact log. This method produces the
maximum number of billets per log.
Method #2 (on the right)
is the split and turn method. Workers
split logs into triangular bolts then turn each bolt on a lathe to create a
billet. This method is used on logs with
a spiral grain structure that requires hand splitting.
At every station we would see
the machines and workers working on the bats and a video would show the process
up-close while our guide explained the process.
There were so many times I wanted to pull out my camera!
These bats were completed
but still needed the ends cut off.
We passed large bins of
the end pieces and were told to take as many as we wanted.
We watched the workers
dipping these bats in paint and hanging them to dry.
More bats drying.
This factory makes both
pro bats and bats for the general public.
The pros like the ends of
the bats hollowed out to make them lighter.
You can buy a custom bat.
For an additional fee you
can go into the bat vault. The oldest
bats in the vault are 100 years old.
There are over 3,000 original bat models in the vault. We didn’t pay the extra but there are windows
to see into the vault and there are plenty of bats outside the vault to hold.
Bat vault.
The museum is large. They were having a little Halloween fun.
There is a batting cage
where you can hit replica bats of Babe Ruth, Jackie Robinson, etc. Outside the batting cage is a very large
baseball glove sitting area.
This 34,000 pound glove is
sculpted from Kentucky limestone. It’s
12 feet long, 9 feet wide, and 4 feet high.
The front doors had to be removed when it was delivered on July 21,
1998.
We were each given a mini
souvenir bat after our tour.
Over 8,000 pros have
signed contracts. These are 10 year
contracts which mean they can only use Louisville Slugger bats during that
time.
There is a large gift
shop.
Remember the trimmed ends
we were told to take? We picked up a
couple.
This tour is certainly
magnet (or two) worthy.
The tiny souvenir bats are
fun. I’ll have to find a way to display
one of them.
After our tour Mark found
a nice disc golf course to play.
Next time: Tennessee
