I recently made my third trip to Louisville. On my previous trips I'd tried to visit the Louisville Slugger Museum but it had been closed both times. This time I was determined to see the museum and working bat factory. On my last day in town I did, in fact, find myself inside the museum at last.

Home to Hillerich & Bradsby Co. (the actual manufacturers of Louisville Slugger bats), the Louisville Slugger Museum is also a working baseball bat factory where the bats used by Major League Baseball players are made. Part of the museum experience is a tour of the factory while work is actually in progress.

Frankly it is this tour that most people come for, the chance to see bats that could be used by your favorite player under construction and to learn just how bats are made. I didn't even really know that there was more to the museum before I got there; even the locals tend to just talk about the factory aspects.

Unfortunately they've changed the tour in recent days (defined as at some point between the last time my friend from Louisville went to the museum and the time of my visit in April 2003). Whereas before you got a good glimpse of the actual working factory, now the tour consists mainly of stops at five video viewing stations that explain specific tasks in the bat making process. Oh, you still get to walk through the working factory, but now you essentially are herded through to these five stops. Each stop is somewhat close to the place where people really are performing the tasks outlined in the videos but not generally close enough to really see what they're doing and questions are not allowed. The tour began in a room with a video and some information cards on the collection of timber and we weren't even allowed to watch that video in full. Basically once everyone assembled we were herded to the next station. This rushed feel remained as we were greatly encouraged to quickly move to the next television screen as soon as each video ended.

I found this tour extremely disappointing. Although I did learn quite a bit about how bats were made and, in a few cases, was able to see bits and pieces of the actual process underway, I didn't leave the tour feeling like I'd really seen bats being made. I could have watched those videos at home and gotten the same information without the extra noise and distraction of trying to cram 20 people in front of a single television set. A factory tour should have some value added beyond reading about or viewing the process on tape; this one did not.

The museum proper, however, was wonderful.

Mostly one large room with a few small ancillary rooms tucked off in odd spots along the way, the museum concentrates on the history of bat making and on the way bats have changed over time. One long wall is devoted to the history of hitting with panels covering each decade since the 1890s. The panels are on hip-high flat displays; the walls above these panels are filled with promotional posters for Louisville Slugger, random ads with various players that feature bats in the pictures, and other memorabilia. On top of each section of the display are locked cases with actual bats used by players of that era. You'll see bats used by Home Run Baker, Ty Cobb, Babe Ruth, Honus Wagner, Willie Mays, Jackie Robinson, Hank Aaron, Hack Wilson, Stan Musial, and many other players from every era of baseball. A few of the displays also have a stray glove or pair of spikes but for the most part you get the chance to see bat after bat, to compare the length and shape of one player's bat to another's, to get a glimpse of how bats have evolved over time.

In addition, the center of the room has a series of vertical panels featuring about two dozen players. Each panel has a few paragraphs of biographical and career information on the player in question and one of his bats displayed vertically. Unlike the bats in the timeline display it's unclear whether these bats were ever used in game situations but because of their vertical display these bats are easier to see and easier to compare to one another than the bats along the timeline display.

One of the small offshoot rooms brings you back in time to 1884 when the factory first opened and gives you a 10 minute (or so) presentation on the tools and process used to make baseball bats at that time. It was interesting and well done but presented mainly as an audio track with spotlights on fixed displays of equipment. It perhaps might have been even better with live demonstrations.

Another room has bats from the current pennant winners. Two vertical racks have bats made to the specifications of about 10 players from each team in the World Series. They're a mix of stars and every day players and also, interestingly, a mix of players with and without promotional contracts with Louisville Slugger. You can tell who does and does not have a contract by the way their name in engraved in the bat; the bats of players with contracts have a real signature on them while the bats of other players just have their names in block letters. They could have just chosen to include those players with contracts; that they didn't was classy on their part.

The main room also has a section where you can feel the weight differences between the bats of about six current players. The bats were locked into braces that let them pivot but prevented you from actually lifting or really holding them so some of the oomph was taken out of the experience. Still just handling the bats in motion did give you a general feel for the differences.

The last major area of the main room was a little mini theater. Containing a few hard benches near a large screen placed under a recreated Polo Grounds scoreboard showing Bobby Thompson at the plate, they're obviously trying to recreate a bleacher seat feel to the game. The screen shows five short clips; four highlighting top hitters of different eras and the fifth showing "The Shot Heard 'Round the World". These made a nice breather from the museum proper and were all fairly well produced but again were perhaps slightly out of place in a museum that supposedly focuses on bats and the bat-making process.

In addition to this main room and the small side rooms connected to it there is also a special gallery and a large room that recreated the infield at Camden Yard. The recreated field has a few audio recordings that talk about the game and various players from the perspective of batboys and a small room celebrating the announcer (including an audio presentation loosely narrated by Pee Wee Reese that lets you hear famous calls from ten different announcers) but the main purpose of is to let you take pictures where you pretend to bat against the pitcher. There are models of a pitcher, catcher, and home plate umpire, but no one at bat. At the end of the factory tour section each visitor is given a small commemorative bat; almost every visitor used this bat to pretend to hit here.

The special gallery, known as the Pee Wee Reese Room, is home to the temporary exhibits. During my visit it had displays of lost contracts. Basically at some point during the 80s approximately 30 contracts disappeared from the factory; they assumed they'd accidentally been thrown out but in fact they ended up in the hands of a New York memorabilia collector. The company took legal action and regained possession of their contracts. Each contract contains multiple signatures from the signee (these were used to make castings for transferring the signatures to the bat) as well as notes about little extras given to the player for signing (often a set of golf clubs or a few dollars). The lost contracts are displayed along with the bat history cards (listing every order ever placed at the factory), pictures, and blurbs about each of the players involved. They included folks like Rogers Hornsby, Ernie Banks, Jackie Robinson, Hank Aaron, Duke Snider, and Rocky Colavito. I really enjoyed this exhibit and even more liked that it was something specific to the factory and the museum that I wouldn't find anywhere else.

The museum, located at 8th and Main in downtown Louisville, is fairly small but packed fairly densely with goodies. I spent about two hours there including the tour. Since I'm a fairly slow and plodding museum visitor who likes to savor everything, I suspect most people will spend closer to an hour on premises. The museum is open from 9-5 Monday through Saturday with some Sunday hours during the baseball season. Admission is $6 for adults, $5 for seniors, and $3.50 for children. Children under 5 are free.

Entrance is set for a specific time and you may have to wait some time before you actually enter the museum. There are a few small exhibits in the lobby area to keep you busy while you wait including a wall listing every player who's ever signed a promotional contract with Louisville Slugger and a large, climb through bronze baseball glove.

There is a small gift shop that sells additional small souvenir bats, larger bats, clothing, and other memorabilia. They also have some inexpensive magnets and keychains if you need souvenirs for folks you left at home. I splurged on a few tapes of baseball songs (alas, not available as CDs) I've never seen anywhere else. They also sell personalized baseball bats and will ship bats anywhere in the United States for $5.

I did skip one step of the visitor experience. You actually enter via a small movie theater where you're shown a short "rah rah isn't baseball wonderful" movie. While I quite agree that baseball is the bee's knees, I would have preferred something more directly related to bats or bat manufacture. The movie was glossy and featured quite a few current and former stars. It was written to evoke a sense of nostalgia and to give you a feel for how players approach the game. I enjoyed the movie, but again felt it was perhaps slightly out of place here.

If you're in town the Louisville Slugger Museum is definitely worth visiting. Although the factory tour is extremely disappointing, the museum itself is worthwhile for any baseball fan. It very much felt like a smaller version of the Hall of Fame museum in Cooperstown, although with a definite focus on bats. If you've enjoyed a visit to Cooperstown you'll probably enjoy this museum. If you can't get to Cooperstown but can get to Louisville, this museum will give you a taste of what you're missing.

Baseball Writeoff

This is my third entry into AliventiAsylum's baseball writeoff (you can find my first entry here and my second entry here). This writeoff commemorates the beginning of another season when all things are possible and we don't yet have to wait until next year. The writeoff extends until the end of April. Please look for entries by these writers:

Debbie26, chad8246, kld718, sleeper54, Susie-34668, Donnie013, jbduckling, Bryan_Carey, lisa_j, chaospump, quasar, pmills1210, thegeniusx, marinermoose22, aliventiasylum

Recommended: Yes

Best Suited For: Families
Best Time to Travel Here: Anytime