Louisville, Kentucky - Part 2

First of all, to Tom, Judy and Geri, thank you for your kind comments. It's great to know that I have put a smile on your face.


The next morning we woke up to a very, very soggy day. It started raining the night before and continued through the rest of the day. There's nothing sadder than seeing motors sitting out in the rain and no one using them (boo-hoo, sob, sob). Okay, enough of that. We had four wheels and we didn't care what the weather was. So off we go to our next sight-seeing destination - the Louisville Slugger Museum and the Frazier International History Museum. I was really excited to visit the Louisville Slugger Museum because it also included a tour of the factory and I could see how this famous bat was made. Unfortunately picture taking was not allowed in the factory so I will try to remember everything that we saw.


First some interesting facts about the bats made. The trees that are used for bat making need to be older than 80 years old. During just one baseball season there are over 40,000 trees that will be used. In fact, there is a forest that the factory owns that they grow their own trees. Now each tree will yield about 60 bats - that's including bats for professional players and everyone else. When they used to make bats by hand it would take about 20 minutes to carve one using a hand plane and a caliper - measuring the new bat to the old one to get it just right. Now with machinery and a standard template it takes about 30 seconds. Annually, the factory will make about 1.8 million bats. During our tour we saw bats being make for Alex Rodriguez. They told us that each professional player has such specific details on their bats that they can tell just by swinging it if it's make right or not. As we entered the factory you realize just how small the factory is! It's about the size of an average warehouse. Once the bats are carved then they go to the sealing department where they are dipped, by hand, in a special lacquer sealing and hung to dry. After they are dried they get painted (if someone wants a special color, there are nine in all) or they can stay natural colored. The last step is deciding what type of label to put on the bat. You have a choice of burning, embossed or sticker. My son is getting his own personalized bat made for him. Enjoy, Brian.


In the museum you can see bats from Babe Ruth (see picture), Hank Aaron and some older guys (sorry, I couldn't remember their names). Also in the museum they have a display that has you standing behind the catcher as if you are the umpire (but behind a Plexiglas shield) and a pitching machine pitches a ball at you with the speed of a pro player. I don't see how the umps do it! Even though I was behind a shield I dodged every time it was thrown at me. Those things could hurt you real bad!!!!!


Our next stop was a few doors down the street and that was the Frazier International History Museum. Sounds great huh? Well, according to the description in the visitor's guide it says, "A world-class museum that takes visitors on an unforgettable journey through 1,000 years of history; with interactive displays, multi-media presentations & costumed interpreters." Boy, that sounds great! Now, Karl said he doesn't read my blogs because he trusts me in giving you the information of what we saw (sure that is a good idea, Karl?). Well, this museum was great for the men, "Wow, look at that! What a neat thing!), but really boring for the women, "Okay, I've seen a couple dozen of the same things, can we leave now?" The museum is a collection of weapons from the medieval days to the present. I mean you can only see guns, knives and swords for so long then they all look the same. Sorry, guys, but for me I could have been in and out in less than a hour. BUT Karl was really getting into this stuff so we ended up staying about 3 hours (ho-hum). I do have to say they do have a rather unique agreement with the Royal Armory of Britain in that they exchange between each other. So we saw a lot of British stuff and I imagine that they have a lot of American stuff over in London. The one thing that was great (for me anyway) was that the museum had the armour of King Henry VIII (when he was young and lean). And it was very interesting to see how they made chain-mail armour - tedious work.


Don't' forget to take a look the the photos on the link to the left of the page.


Next time I think the guys will really enjoy my blog. We went to the National Corvette Museum.