Legend has it that it was one Pete Browning who became the first player to hit a baseball with a “slugger” after his own baseball bat got broken.
The year was 1884, and a young man handed him a new wooden bat after his own was broken during a game. The new instrument was the prototype of the bat which became known as the “Louisville Slugger” and which, over 130 years later, is almost synonymous with Major League Baseball (MLB) itself.
The curious thing about it was that Frederick Hillerich, the German immigrant from whose woodworking shop in Louisville the bat came, was actually busy making other things — bed posts, stair railings, bowling balls and pins, butter churns — for the folks of the state of Kentucky.
But making money to supply those guys wearing knickerbockers and batting a ball around in this new-fangled field game called baseball? — No way. Hillerich thought the game was a fad, one pursued by drinkers and women-chasers.
Hillerich’s son Bud had a different hunch. Learning the woodworking trade in his father’s shop, it was he who made the first bat for Pete Browning, and he was insistent on making more.
Soon, more and more players were ordering his bats made of hickory wood. The hand-made “Louisville Slugger” would go on to fame that came with being used by the legendary stars of the game — Babe Ruth, Jackie Robinson, Joe DiMaggio, Lou Gehrig and Mickey Mantle, to name only a few.
Today, the Hillerich & Bradsby company produces 1.8 million Louisville Sluggers a year for all 30 MLB teams as well as for minor league teams, colleges, and schools around America.
“We helped to write a lot of baseball history,” comments Anthony Sciotti, taking visitors on a tour of the plant. Machinery is humming and unfinished bat dummies are piling up.
The air smells of fresh wood. Today, machines carve in 30 seconds what workers once did by hand, and the wood is now ash and maple wood supplied from forests near the Niagara Falls and in Canada.
Each day, 4.5 tonnes’ worth of wood shavings are produced and are shipped to a turkey farmer in the nearby state of Indiana for use in his turkey pens.
By the company’s own account, 60 per cent of all MLB players use a Louisville Slugger. But it has many competitors, with dozens of other makers supplying many players. The company Marucci, founded in 2002, now claims to be the number-one bat maker.
“We also faced competition from brands that were part of much larger publicly-traded corporate conglomerates,” Hillerich & Bradsby spokesman Rick Redman said. “(These were) companies that were multi-billion dollar entities that had greater resources for product development, marketing, and sales than a modest-sized family-owned business.”
A recall action for a defective softball bat also did not make business any easier. These bats, made of aluminium and permissible for use in the lower leagues, were initially produced in California, and after 2008, in China.
Ultimately there came the sad day in March 2015 when the Hillerichs sold their stake in the brand for 70 million dollars. It now is owned by the sporting goods company Wilson, that itself is part of the Finnish concern Amer Sports.
As tough as it was, the Hillerich family realised that the time had come to sell their iconic American brand to new owners who had the experience and means to bring it to new heights, Redman said.
Fifty-two employees, almost one-fifth of the work force, were put out of work. The Slugger is still produced in Kentucky, but control over business matters is now in the hands of a publicly-listed company that gradually went on to surpass the Hillerichs.
All this is of little concern to fans who come to visit the Louisville Slugger Museum. Kids pose for pictures with bats autographed by their idols. Visitors admire one bat owned by Babe Ruth that had notches carved into it for each home run he hit.
Museum shops offer Sluggers where visitors can have their own names etched into the wood. It is hard to miss the museum itself, what with a giant bat outside made of 30 tonnes of steel and towering five storeys high. It seems to be saying, many more home runs will be hit with the Louisville Slugger. —DPA