Matthew U.
Yelp
On my personal time, read that as vacation, I wanted to take the trip I had planned when my world came crumbling down. Instead of a fun road trip to places I have never visited I had to face reality and take care of family matters that impact all of us at some point. At that time, I had to cancel my plans to come here, but when the opportunity arose to finally take this trip and heal, I jumped at the chance.
Louisville Slugger Museum and Factory had been on my list to see and I was finally going to be able to experience it. I had bought my ticket ahead of time online to make things a bit easier when I arrived.
Parking wasn't hard to find nearby. There are multiple parking garages to choose from, street parking, and, what I did, found a surface lot right out back. Paid for parking for as long as I thought it would take, and made my way inside.
When you arrive, you are put into a group of people as a tour group. Once through the admission area you go into what is basically the museum part of it and wait until they call your group to gather near the entrance to the factory floor.
You have a guide the entire time you are here and they are the ones with all the information and answers to your questions. You start out with a small film that introduces you to the Louisville Slugger. This is where I found out that the trees used to make the bats are from forests in Pennsylvania. Literally I grew up in Louisville Slugger bat area. Once the short video finishes you are ushered onto the factory floor.
Keep in mind here that this is a working factory, so be prepared to see people working their day away as you are gawking at everything. Be mindful and pay attention. There are solid yellow lines on the floor that let you know you are safe in that area and should stay behind those lines so you run into no harm. It can be a little loud in here, so make sure you pay attention to your tour guide, the do use a microphone on portions of the tour, but not always.
On the tour of the factory you get a glimpse of how the bat starts as a dial of wood and then becomes shaped and conditioned to the final form. There is a wall that has bats from one player of each team of MLB. This allow you to see the difference between the types of woods used. As you move around the floor you see the machines that are used to shape the wood, paint/glaze the bats, and stamp the bats once completed. You learn that some players have visited the factory to custom select the materials used in their bats, one machine has many autographs of those players from when they visited.
You also get to see some of the custom bats for teams and events. Once done with the factory tour you are spilled back out into the museum portion of this. Before going you are welcomed to a miniature bat and portions of the wood the bats are created from.
I felt like the museum portion could have had a bit more to it, and it kind of does, but you only get to view it from afar. There are many interesting things if you look up to an area you are not allow to access. I asked about it and was told that area up above was office space.
Throughout this area there are exhibits of notable people involved in the slugger, players, and groups of teams. Babe Ruth, Roberto Clemente, Jackie Robinson to name a few have an exhibit honoring them. One of the last things you should do is stop by the area where they have bats from players where you can select one and snag a photo with it.
Be sure to stop into the gift shop area. Clothing, souvenirs and of course bats are available for purchase. There is an area where you can get a bat customized however you want. One last thing to do before walking away from here is to get a picture of the big bat leaning against the building.
