Louisville Slugger Museum & Factory Tour
05/25/04: Right in the heart of downtown Louisville sits a giant baseball bat. The bat is right in front of the Louisville Slugger Museum & Factory. Whether you're a baseball fan or not, the enormous bat is sure to catch your eye, and you're almost forced to stop in.
The first thing I must note, is since this museum is downtown, it does not have it's own "free" parking. You'll have to park in a garage somewhere and circle the block a few times like I did. It ended up costing like $3-4 for the duration of our visit. It was certainly less than I expected for a downtown area attraction.
In any case, the Slugger factory tour starts off with a 15 or 20 minute video showing a bunch of scenes of baseball greats using Louisville Slugger bats. Every great from Babe Ruth to Sammy Sosa have all used Louisville Sluggers, and this video was a pretty nice piece showcasing that.
After the video, they send you into a miniature field, where a guy talks about.... well... he talks about something for a minute or two. It must not have been that important. At this point, the tour leads to the stuff I came to see. They walk you to the factory floor.
All of the processes are highlighted in the tour. They show the blocks being shaved and smoothed down. The processes such as logo impression, engraving, and colorization are also showed. It was a neat little tour, but since the factory isn't actually the "biggest" production area of the company, things were a little slow. (Most Louisville Sluggers are actually made in California now.)
After the factory tour, they take you back to the museum and show you a few Babe Ruth bats worth like half a million dollars. At this point, they hand you a 18 inch souvenir bat. (Hmm.. so the bat in front of me is worth a few hundred thousand bucks, and you've just handed me an implement of destruction. Smart planning.) No, I didn't steal the bats, but I can't be the only one who thought of it.
The tour itself is a pretty neat tour, which combined with the video and stuff rounded out to about an hour. It's $8 for adults, and $4 for kids, and everyone gets the mini-bat. If you're really into baseball, you can even order a custom engraved bat at the beginning, which should be ready by the time you leave.
If you can't make it to Louisville, you can still order the custom made bats and check out museum related things at http://www.sluggermuseum.org. If you are passing through town though, I definitely recommend stopping in. It's a fun time!
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