The first professional baseball bat was made by Bud Hillerich in 1884 for Pete Browning. Pete Browning played for the Louisville Eclipse and was known as the Louisville Slugger. Later this is where the company name would come from. In the photo below (top center) you can see the bat Browning used.
We weren't allowed to take pictures during the factory tour but here are a few interesting things I learned.
It is not a very big factory.
They were making bats for Jason Heyward of the Cubs the day I was there.
It takes 30 minutes to hand carve a bat. They don't do this anymore of course except to show us on the tour.
Each year 40,000 Northern White Ash and Maple trees supply logs for bats. The ideal trees are 80 years old.
Only 10% of the logs are high quality enough for major league bats, so the rest are used for minor league bats, recreational bats and mini bats.
Each day the factory turns out 2,000-5,000 wooden bats plus 4,000-5,000 mini bats.
Big league players order 100-120 bats each season, with unique specifications for each player. About 70% of players use maple bats because it is a very hard wood.
Louisville Slugger Factory produces 1.8 million bats each year including mini bats.
The big bat standing outside the museum (pictured above) is 120 feet tall and weighs 68,000 pounds. It is hollow but could hold 30,000 gallons of water. It is an exact scale replica of Babe Ruth's bat. The signature belongs to Bud Hillerich, who made the first bat in 1884.
The big glove was sculpted from a 60,000 pound slab of Kentucky limestone in 16 months. The glove weighs 34,000 pounds, and is 12 feet long, 9 feet wide and 4 feet high.
At the end of the tour you are given a Louisville Slugger mini bat.
I am not a huge baseball fan but I enjoyed this place. If you love baseball, put this on your bucket list.
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