Louisville, Ky., is known to many as the home of Churchill Downs, the location for the Kentucky Derby. However, it is also the home of Louisville Slugger, the company which makes baseball bats for many minor and professional baseball teams.
This Fourth of July, I spent the weekend visiting Louisville with my boyfriend and his family. The highlight of this trip for me was going to the Louisville Slugger Museum.
The tour takes you through the workshop to see first hand how each bat is made.
They show you how the wood is cut and shaved into the bat shape.
Then how it is sanded and painted and lastly engraved and branded and ready to be shipped out.
One of my favorite parts was learning about the colors of the bats.
Aside from the regular wood finishing, they have two different black ones, one which has a gold branding to cover the lines on the bat because Ken Griffey Jr. claimed to be distracted by the lines.
They have a pink bat which is only allowed to be played with on Mother’s Day. Each player gets two pink bats to autograph. One goes to their mother, and the other is put online to be auctioned off where the proceeds go to breast cancer.
Then there is the two-tone bat.
The first bat that was two-tone was originally used as a paint stir to mix the paint for the bats.
This bat started being made after former St. Louis Cardinal’s player, Harry “The Hat” Walker came in, picked the bat up from the paint and liked the way it looked.
This finish was given the name “The Walker Finish.”
I was pretty excited to see two Atlanta Braves players’, Jeff Francoeur and Brian McCann, bats hanging on the dryer.
There are so many famous players that have used Louisville Slugger bats. It was neat to walk around the museum and see Ty Cobb, Ted Williams, Mickey Mantle and Babe Ruth’s models lying around in cases.
Outside the front door of the museum stands the world’s largest baseball bat. This is the landmark for the museum.
The “Big Bat” stands 120 feet tall with the base of the bat being 9 feet in diameter. Can you imagine standing beside this thing?
At the end of the tour, there is a gift shop where you can purchase real Slugger bats. You can get them personalized with your name, nickname and even your favorite baseball team’s logo.
My boyfriend was kind enough to purchase one for my baseball fanatic father who is battling cancer.
We know it will make his day. I can’t wait to give it to him!
The cost of the museum is very cheap, so if you are ever in the area, definitely go check it out.
While in Louisville, we also got to go by Churchill Downs so I could see where the Derby is held every year. It was very cool to see.
There were summer races going on, so it was hard to try and get in to where I could see the grandstand and the track.
Although, my determined boyfriend drove around until we found an unguarded gate to a parking lot that we pulled into where I got to see the track.
This allowed me to even see some horses racing. I definitely took a few pictures.
However, we did not get to go to the museum because we were only in town for the weekend and ran out of time.
Maybe one day I will get to go to the museum; I have heard it is a good experience.
All in all, it was a very good trip. I enjoyed not only seeing where my boyfriend is from, but getting to experience a city full of sports history.
