Louisville, Kentucky

Louisville Slugger Museum and Factory; April 17, 2023

Once again, I can’t figure out how to load the photos in the blog in the order I’d like to show them. In any case, Dan and I headed from Bardstown to Louisville to visit the factory where Louisville Slugger bats are made. It was a very interesting and informative tour. Our first fun fact was that the forest where trees are harvested for Louisville Slugger bats are harvested is located not all that far, relatively speaking, from where we live. The forest is the northern part of the Allegheny Forest in NW Pennsylvania, near the border with New York State. Bats are made with maple (“When it shatters, it REALLY shatters!”), northern white ash and birch. We were surprised to learn that today, the Louisville Slugger bat is used by only 27% of the players in major league baseball. (There’s a lot of competition today!)

Actual game bats of Roger Maris and Mickey Mantle, who were playing when I first started watching baseball, in 1963.

Jim Thome was awarded the Living Legend Award within two weeks prior to our visit.

We like it BIG: baseball mitt and ball. Dan refused to pose with it.

Gone too soon.

An actual Willie Mays game bat

We like it BIG: baseball bat. I’ve watched this one from the freeway for years as we would drive by!

Note the cupping, done as personal preference, in this load of bats

Here I am, swinging the authentic Willie Mays game bat

Bats in production

The Louisville Slugger Bat Vault. Sample bats used for making more of the same, in the Vault. Each bat is named with the first initial of the last name of the player who first used the bat, and a number corresponding to how many bats are using that number. Often players would use someone else’s bat and some are popular styles. There’s a book with a list of all the MLB players who used Louisville Slugger bats, by model number.

Painting the bats. I didn’t get a satisfactory answer as to why they paint the bats. Apparently no one uses  just plain unpainted wooden bats these days.

Babe Ruth’s bat. Each time he would hit a home run with his bat, he would carve a notch in the bat around the Louisville Slugger trademark