Tool Of The Trade

Tool of the Trade

In any game, the equipment players use determines the way the game unfolds. Try to imagine a soccer game played with an American football! Or try playing tennis with the wooden racquets of thirty years ago. Change the equipment, and you discover a very different game. As part of my look at baseball, I decided to examine the tool of the baseball trade: Bats.

Perhaps the most crucial and visible tool in baseball is the bat. A bat is the offensive weapon, the tool with which runs are scored. To understand the history and science of bats, I read a magazine published by Louisville Slugger, in Louisville, Kentucky home of the Hillerich & Bradsby Company, Inc. (also known as H&B), the manufacturers of perhaps America's most famous bat, the Louisville Slugger. Through the reading I learned how the modern bat came to be, and what it might become.

In 1884, John Andrew "Bud" Hillerich played hooky from his father's woodworking shop and went to a baseball game. There he watched a star player, Pete "The Old Gladiator" Browning, struggling in a batting slump. After the game, Hillerich invited Browning back to the shop, where they picked out a piece of white ash, and Hillerich began making a bat. They worked late into the night, with Browning giving advice and taking practice swings from time to time. What happened next is legend.

The next day, Browning went three-for-three, and soon the new bat was in demand across the league. H&B flourished from there. First called the Falls City Slugger, the new bat was called the Louisville Slugger by 1894. Though Hillerich's father thought bats were an insignificant item, and preferred to continue making more dependable items like bedposts and bowling pins, bats became a rapidly growing part of the family business.

Just as it was back then, the classic Louisville Slugger bat used by today's professional players is made from white ash. The wood is specially selected from forests in Pennsylvania and New York. The trees they use must be at least fifty years old before they are harvested. After

harvest, the wood is dried for six to eight months to a precise moisture level. The best quality wood

is selected for pro bats; the other 90 percent is used for consumer market bats. White ash is used for its combination of hardness, strength, weight, "feel," and durability.

In past years, H&B have made some bats out of hickory.