Slugger museum pounds out romance, history
BASEBALL | Artifacts abound; factory tour is grand slam
LOUISVILLE, Ky. -- Jose Cardenal roamed the Wrigley Field outfield in the 1970s, a favorite with a lot of fans but especially so for certain females -- despite a bushy afro that, bursting from beneath his Cubbie ball cap, made him look more like Bozo than a ballplayer.
Cardenal hit a respectable .275 during his career but he remains a big presence in the game today, and not just as an advisor to the Washington Nationals. The bat he helped develop remains the most popular model among big league ballplayers who swing the iconic Louisville Slugger.
LOUISVILLE SLUGGER MUSEUM & FACTORY: 800 W. Main St. Admission is $10 for adults, $9 for seniors 60 and older, $5 for children between 6-12, and free for kids under 6. No bat production on Sundays; (877) 775-8443, www.sluggermuseum.org.
WHERE TO STAY: The vibe is hip, funky and modern at 21C Museum Hotel, 700 W. Main St., a 90-room, centrally located property that's part inn, part art museum. Nightly rates range from $199-$450. For some real Louisville flavor (and good people watching), order a mint julep at the bar of the hotel's restaurant, Proof on Main (at left); (877) 217-6400, www.21cmuseumhotel.com.
The C-271, in fact, is used by another Chicago outfielder: Ken Griffey Jr. of the White Sox. Cardenal hit 138 homers; Griffey has walloped more than 600.
"It's not the arrow but the Indian,'' former major leaguer and Chicago native Kirby Puckett once said of bats and the men who swing them.
But that hasn't stopped thousands of major leaguers from huddling with the artisans of Louisville-based Hillerich & Bradsby Co. to come up with the perfect piece of wood, a ritual that has played out for more than a century.
Chicago has been blessed this summer: the North Siders are considered by many to be the best team in baseball and the South Siders made it to the playoffs, too. But here in northern Kentucky, baseball is a year-round affair with its charming Louisville Slugger Museum and Factory, the nursery where hits are born.
The smell of baseball has always been cut grass, leather mitts and onions frying to a sizzle before finding their proper place aboard a hot dog.
A visit here to the Slugger center will add a few new entries to the olfactory menu: cut wood, fresh sawdust and pungent lacquer.
Some 60 percent of major leaguers use Hillerich & Bradsby Co.'s most famous product. While there has been an explosion in small speciality bat companies -- now there are more than 40 -- none carry the romance of the Slugger, which traces its history back to a teenage Bud Hillerich.
Working at his father's bedpost business in 1884, Hillerich created a "base ball" bat for local sensation, Pete Browning, a k a "The Louisville Slugger.''
In 1996, when the museum and public factory tours opened to the public, Mr. Cub, Ernie Banks, marvelled over the skills involved in making a major league bat but also "the love they put into the product.''
Indeed, in these days of globalization, the Slugger factory seems an American anachronism: craftsmen, dressed in blue jeans and T-shirts, using their hands to make a consumer product.
While H&B began in Louisville, the company moved production to southern Indiana in 1973, a hey-day for wooden bats when the firm pumped out nearly 7 million a year. In 1996, with wooden baseball bats largely replaced in youth, high school and college leagues with aluminum models and production down by some two-thirds, the firm returned home to cozier confines.
Out-of-towners can't miss the Slugger plant at 8th and Main: a 120-foot-tall, 68,000-pound carbon steel replica of Babe Ruth's bat (seemingly) leans casually against the company's five-story headquarters. Inside, another oversized art piece awaits: a 12-foot-long, nine-foot-wide mitt made from 450-million-year-old Kentucky limestone.
But it's the real artifacts -- for baseball fanatics, anyway -- that are larger than life.
The bat that Hank Aaron used for his 700th round-tripper? It's here, not far from the bat Pete Rose used to smack his 2,000th hit. On display is an aged Ty Cobb bat, with nails pounded into it in an effort to strengthen it.
Everywhere are pictures of ballplayers smooching their bats with all the amorous enthusiasm of a groom on his wedding day.
But as far as historic lumber goes, tops may be the 1927 Ruth model in which the Bambino put a notch around the Hillerich & Bradsby logo for each home run. The Babe put 21 nicks on the bat, giving it a kind of sunrise tattoo, before his 35-inch-long, 38-ounce model cracked. The Slugger Museum is planning a renovation that will add a bat swung by Joe DiMaggio during his record 56 consecutive-game hitting streak in 1941--one of only three he used during the feat.
Baseball inspires a peculiar superstition in its fans -- billy goats, anyone? But that voodoo is nothing compared to some of the men who have played the game.
Orlando Cepeda, we learn, gave away his bats after every home run, believing that a bat ran out of energy when it sent one over the wall. On the other hand, Joe Sewell, who played through the 1920s, used the same bat for 14 years. Eddie Collins buried his bats in manure during the winters to "keep them alive.''
Some of the oddness may be warranted. Ted Williams took his bats to the post office to use their scale, making sure his lumber weighed exactly 34 ounces.
So particular was Williams that when he complained that his bats didn't feel right, Slugger workers used a calibrator and found the handles were, in fact, 5/1000ths of an inch off. Williams was the last man to hit over .400, led the league in hitting six times and had a career average of .344. "I'd have been a .290 hitter without a Louisville Slugger," he once said.
Hitting a round ball squarely is said to be one of the most difficult feats in sports. And that seems especially true in another exhibit at the Slugger museum that gives people an idea of what a 90-mile-an-hour fastball looks like.
Against a backdrop of Wrigley Field, a film shows a number of pitchers hurling, including flame-throwing Randy Johnson, with an actual ball fired from the screen. Protected behind a fence, visitors see the ball come at them in, literally, the blink of an eye. Major league hitters have two-tenths of a second to pick up the pitch, decide to swing, make contact and place the ball where the other team ain't.
You might find yourself re-examining the notion that hitters are paid too much.
The real hit of the Slugger center, though, is the factory tour. While computer-controlled lathes cut the thick round billets -- chunks of ash and maple -- into baseball bats, it takes a considerable amount of skill to make a Slugger, a talent that unfolds before the visitors' eyes.
Working behind Plexiglass screens, gray-haired employees, some with more than 30 years experience, craft the major league models, carefully inspecting and sanding each stick made to player specifications. In a roar, the lathes shake the factory floors as the cutting machines spin and carve the billets into bats.
Pros can go through as many as 125 bats a season, and storage slots can be seen with some familiar Chicago names: Swisher, Thome, Konerko. Bats wet with lacquer hang drying. A branding machine, heating to 1,400 degrees, burns major leaguer signatures into the wood, including the clubs used by current Cubbies Jim Edmonds, Mark De Rosa and Ryan Theriot.
Puckett might be right: Good hitters can hit with anything. Mickey Mantle often used his teammates' bats, randomly choosing any available stick as he headed for the plate.
But another big chief -- Tony Gwynn of the San Diego Padres -- tells author Bob Hill in The Crack of the Bat, "You shoot yourself in the foot if you don't go up to the plate with a bat you're comfortable with.''
Baseball fans will feel right at home at the Louisville Slugger museum. For diehards, it's a grand slam.
For sports history buffs, Louisville is a triple crown winner -- baseball, boxing and horse racing.
Visitors staying at Louisville's excellent hipster digs, 21C Museum Hotel -- part inn, part art gallery -- are only a few blocks from the Muhammad Ali Center at 144 N. Sixth St.
While it's light on artifacts, the Ali Center is a heavyweight in presenting the life of one of the 20th century's most fascinating figures through a comprehensive array of films and dynamic exhibits.
Particularly interesting is Ali's conversion to Islam. It all started with a 1959 visit to Chicago for the Golden Gloves competition. He picked up a copy of the Nation of Islam newspaper, the Final Call, and became intrigued by the sermons of Elijah Muhammad. He brought home to Louisville a record by Louis Farrakhan and, in 1964, announced his conversion, changing his name from Cassius Clay. Ali would later leave the N.O.I. and align himself with the more mainstream Muslim leader, Chicago's late Warith Deen Mohammed.
In celebrating Ali's victories, the Center doesn't shy from Ali's abhorrent portrayal of opponent Joe Frazier, a fellow African-American, as an "Uncle Tom'' -- a race card Ali played in order to boost the gate. (Ali apologized in 2001, saying, "I said a lot of things in the heat of the moment that I shouldn't have said.")
Fight fans will enjoy cozy nooks to watch video highlights of Ali fights. Even if you're not a boxing nut, some hands-on displays include an exhibit where visitors can box with a real fighter appearing in shadow form; a specially built heavy bag lets visitors feel the monstrous mule-kick of a heavyweight's punching power.
Get to Churchill Downs early in the morning for a visit to the back barn area of this world-famous horse racing track that hosts the Kentucky Derby.
Hundreds of horses live here and visitors can get a behind-the-scenes look at how these powerful animals are trained. On a recent morning, like a scene out of "Seabiscuit," the magnificent beasts galloped through the morning fog and grooms could be seen giving the thoroughbreds their steamy morning baths.
The Kentucky Derby Museum covers the history of the race and includes interesting insight into race horses and their riders: Thoroughbreds can go from zero to 40 miles an hour in three strides and, on average, two jockeys a year are killed in races.
The museum also presents some excellent experiences that reveal what it's like to be a jockey. Just try crouching -- no sitting! -- on the back of a mechanical horse for more than two minutes as a film shows the rider what it looks like on the track during a race.
Talk about a ThighMaster workout! Whoa!
Andrew Herrmann