Louisville Slugger Anecdotes
The history of Louisville Slugger and of baseball itself is sprinkled with interesting characters and stories that have helped define America's pastime.
Michael Jordan baseball paraphernalia apparently is every bit as hot as his basketball memorabilia. The first shipment of Louisville Slugger bats featuring Jordan's name and "Chicago White Sox" on the barrel disappeared on the way to training camp in the Spring of 1994 and never turned up. Another order was made up quickly and shipped to replace them. As a footnote, the bat ordered by the superstar is a model originally designed for a player who never made it to the big leagues. The M216 bat ordered by Jordan features a black finish, 35" length and 33 oz. weight. The bat was originally designed for Cliff Mathew in 1967 when he joined the minor leagues. Jordan settled on this particular bat after specifying a certain handle, barrel dimension, color, weight, and length. A check of the computer files showed that particular combination to be an M216.
Lenny Dykstra is among many major league players who are very particular about their bats. Dykstra sent back the special bats he got as the National League Championship Series began in 1993. The Louisville Slugger bats were stamped "1993 LCS" under his signature to commemorate the playoffs. Lenny said that, instead, he wanted his bats for the series to be exactly the same as the ones he used all season -- with "Philadelphia Phillies" stamped under his name. The bats were replaced.
Major league players are particular not only about the specifications of their bats, but about the wood, itself. Some players like a wide grain, others a more narrow grain, each thinking their preference is harder. (Actually, in good quality wood, the grain width makes little, if any, difference in hardness.) Sometimes players will perceive that someone else is getting better wood than they are, making for some interesting orders. After deciding that Barry Larkin was getting better wood in his bats than they were, other Cincinnati Reds began ordering bats in their specifications but with Barry Larkin's name, thinking the craftsmen filling the order wouldn't know the difference. Ted Williams was fussy about his Louisville Slugger bats. He once complained about the way the handle tapered on his favorite bat. He sent them back, saying their grips didn't feel right.
They weren't. H&B staff members measured the grip with calibrators against the models he had been using. They discovered that Williams' new bats were 5/1000ths of an inch off.
Williams also could tell differences in the weight of his bats. J.A. Hillerich, Jr., a late president of the company, once tested Williams. He gave him six bats, five weighing exactly the same, the sixth weighing one-half ounce more. Williams picked out the one with the minute difference.
Every spring during his playing years, Williams would visit the Louisville Slugger plant. He would hardly break stride saying hello to executives in the office, but once with "his boys" in the factory, he called them by name and greeted them as old friends. Williams would soon be out of his coat and on a ladder, hand-picking timber for his bats. He spent time with each employee, as if to refresh them on how he wanted his bats made each year.
In October of 1993, Williams wrote to H&B vice president Bill Williams, "I'd have been a .290 hitter without a Louisville Slugger."
The Louisville Slugger logo doesn't always appear just on bats. One of the more recent adaptations of the familiar oval was on the first cruise missile fired in the Persian Gulf war. The missile was painted by sailors on the U.S.S. Louisville nuclear attack submarine which fired the opening shot of the conflict. Each of the sailors on board received a personalized Louisville Slugger bat when the ship was originally commissioned.
During World War II, some sporting goods found their way to a German prison camp in Upper Silesia.
Dr. Carroll Witten of Louisville remembers that these articles included ice skates, some balls and Louisville Slugger bats. The American prisoners of war -- about 26 or 27 from Kentucky --æactually cried when they saw that familiar trademark, a sentimental reminder of home.
Don Porter, executive director of the Amateur Softball Association, served in the Korean War. During a lull in the fighting, he and some of his buddies were playing softball. They had only one ball and a bat, a Louisville Slugger. Enemy action cut short the game. Everyone fled to the slit trenches. One man, however, rushed back into the open, grabbed the bat and returned to the trench.
Later, the soldier simply explained that it was the only bat they had, and that the thought it might be destroyed caused him to rush out after it.
In early spring 1927, Babe Ruth strode into the Hillerich & Bradsby plant. "Turn me out some bats," the Babe said. "I want the Sam Crawford model but one inch longer." The H&B wood turner went to work. The bat took shape, thick in the barrel and tapered at the handle with a knob at one end and a rounded finish at the other.
The Babe hefted each bat as it was produced, 19 in all. He frowned constantly. But he wrote later from New York, asking that they be shipped to him from Louisville anyway. After that no message of endorsement was necessary. The Bambino discovered they were better bats than first impressions had led him to believe. He hit his record 60 home runs with them that year.
During one of their hitting slumps, the Cincinnati Reds sought help from Hillerich & Bradsby. The Reds got a new supply of Louisville Slugger bats and some advice: Let the Louisville Slugger bats lie in the sun outside the dugout. The team did. And the Cincinnati Reds pulled out of their hitting slump and became ardent fans of Louisville Slugger bats. But the "advice" was just pulled out of the air as a humorous gag by a Louisville Slugger employee who says baseball is 90 percent psychological.
Mickey Mantle used a lot of different Hillerich & Bradsby model bats, but seldom used the one with his signature on it. Mantle usually just picked up any bat that was handy. One day in 1953, he used a Loren Babe model to smash the ball out of Griffin Stadium for a home run. And another time, he used a Dale Long model to bounce the ball off the right field upper deck facade in Yankee Stadium, another of his famous home runs. Together, Long and Babe hit 134 major league homers, 402 fewer than Mantle.
Ralph Garr played in the International League before he won the National League batting championship in 1974. One day he came to Louisville for a game. He had forgotten his bat. So he stopped at Hillerich & Bradsby for another. H&B checked his specifications, produced the bat and sent it to the ball park. Garr refused to use the bat, which had been made precisely according to his specifications. Garr had just one problem with the bat: it didn't bear Ralph Garr's autograph.
Harry "The Hat" Walker, a batting champion with the St. Louis Cardinals, once toured the Hillerich & Bradsby plant. He noticed a bat in a tank of dark stain. Walker pulled it out, shook the bat and said he liked it. From then on, bats for Harry "The Hat" Walker carried a partial "two-tone" stain. That's the way he liked his Louisville Slugger bats, and one way he thought he could improve his hitting.
Today, this look is referred to as "The Walker Finish," and is one of seven different finishes a player can order for his bat.
