Louisville Slugger Museum bats .400 with Cubs, White Sox nostalgia
“Look, there's Ernie Banks.”
Sure enough, a home plate with the baseball legend's name on it and a replica of his bat in bronze stands near a street corner. As my husband and I stroll along Museum Row, a.k.a. West Main Street, in Louisville, Kentucky, we spot more tributes to big names in the major leagues. We spot Mickey Mantle and Wade Boggs and Ty Cobb and Cal Ripken Jr. Some 60 names are enshrined on this milelong Walk of Fame.
And what do they have in common? Each stepped up to the plate with a Louisville Slugger in his hand. It's a fact driven home at 800 W. Main where a 120-foot-tall bat marks the entrance to the Louisville Slugger Museum & Factory. A scale replica of Babe Ruth's 34-inch Slugger, it's hard to miss.
Inside, you can hold actual bats used by major league players past and present, including Chicago Cubs and White Sox greats Jim Thome, Paul Konerko, Andre Dawson, Ron Santo, Dick Allen and Ken Griffey Jr., who played half a season for the Sox in 2008. Bats on display behind glass include those used by Sox legend “Shoeless” Joe Jackson and Hall of Famer Joe Tinker, member of that legendary 1908 Cubs World Series team.
You can see the notches Babe Ruth carved in his bat for each of his 60 home runs in his 1927 season and admire the bat Joe DiMaggio used in his 56-game winning streak. One of the galleries has lifelike sculptures of baseball greats and an opportunity to stare down a 90 mph fastball from Cole Hamels.
In a film narrated by James Earl Jones, players such as Thome and Derek Jeter share their insights into the art and science of hitting a baseball. Head to the batting cage to put their wisdom into practice, using new models of Louisville Sluggers or choosing from replicas of bats used by Hank Aaron, Evan Longoria and “Mr. Cub” Ernie Banks.
On a Signature Wall, you can run your hands over players' signatures burned onto wood. There's a special section for Hall of Fame Slugger managers and contract players, including Dawson, Greg Maddux and Tony LaRussa. Griffey's name will be added this summer. About 60 percent of major league players use Louisville Slugger bats and several with the Cubs and Sox are under promotional contract with the company, including Cubs starters Jason Heyward and Ben Zobrist and Sox players Alex Avila and J.B. Shuck.
The first bats were fashioned in a wood-turning factory that made bedposts and balusters. J. Frederick Hillerich, the German immigrant who founded the factory in Louisville, scoffed at making bats, but his American-born son, Bud, was an amateur baseball player and took the bat business to heart. The Louisville Slugger trademark originated from the nickname of the player for whom Bud made the first bat in 1884.
On a tour of the factory, you'll see how bats were once hand-turned on a lathe, and then a guide walks you through the current process of turning them out on machines guided by computers. You'll be told which specific players' bats are being produced during your tour.
The wood used in making bats is either northern white ash or maple grown in Pennsylvania or New York, cut and dried in a kiln for about five weeks. Only 10 percent of the logs are of high enough quality for big-league players, who buy 100 to 120 bats each season.
Players are particular about their bats, sending in their specifications or coming to the factory themselves. Ted Williams came so often he called workers by name and would get up on a ladder to handpick the timber for his bats. He once sent a bat back saying the grip didn't feel right, and sure enough, workers found it was 5/1000ths of an inch off. He also could tell if the weight he specified was a half ounce too heavy.
Stan Musial used the thinnest bat, scraping it down himself. He'd start the season with a 33-ounce bat and end with one 31 ounces. In contrast, Babe Ruth's bat weighed 42 ounces. Willie Keeler, who played for the Yankees, used the shortest major league bat at 30.5 inches. Al Simmons, who played in the American League in the '40s, used the longest at 38 inches. Some players prefer wide-grain wood, others narrow, and each insists theirs gives them the best hits. The factory offers 12 different finishes to major leaguers, who are often superstitious and will refuse to use any bat not to their exact specs.
On my tour, I watch as machines shave billets - 37-inch long cylinders of wood from which the factory crafts bats - sending sawdust trickling into a holding bin. Every two or three days, 35,000 pounds of it are shipped off for use on turkey farms. I see wood bats being branded with 1,300-degree heat. Others are marked by laser or foil. A worker at the end of the line hand-dips bats in black lacquer, one of about a dozen finishes the factory offers.
Everyone leaves the tour with a miniature bat, but you can buy your own full-size personalized bat with your name, signature and even a special message on it. If you order when you arrive you might be able to pick it up in the museum store at the end of the tour. You can also order online and have it shipped.
Visit the museum before January and you'll see a special exhibition, “Ripley's Believe It or Not! Oddball,” with the price of admission. More than 100 items on display include quirky baseball oddities, bizarre ballpark food and team-focused treasures. One of the largest items, a bear made from more than 200,000 pine needles, appears to be pining for a Cubs pennant. A piece of art uses the names of every Cubs player in history to create a scene of Wrigley Field. You'll find it near Wrigley seats once placed 10 rows behind home plate. They were torn out after the 1997 season.
Louisville Slugger Museum & Factory
Where: 800 W. Main St., Louisville, Kentucky, (877) 775-8443,
Hours: 9 a.m. to 5 p.m. Monday through Saturday, 11 a.m. to 5 p.m. Sunday with extended hours July 1-Aug. 9. Last tour begins one hour before closing.
Admission: $14 adults, $13 seniors 60 and older, $8 kids 6-12
Greater Louisville Convention and Visitors Bureau: (888) 568-4784 or