Word: hillerich
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Trouble was, George Brett likes the feel of callused skin against unpolished timber, so the T-85s he orders by the cord from the Hillerich & Bradsby Co. in Kentucky are unstained, pure white bolts of mountain ash, legendary Louisville Sluggers. In order to keep his grip without gloves, the Kansas City third baseman takes tar and slathers every bat like a small town honoring a scoundrel. About the middle of the club, maybe a little higher up than the label, Brett cultivates a sticky reserve for when his palms get especially clammy, like when Goose Gossage is pitching...
Like Williams, Carew can tell with a single heft if his bat is minutely out of order. Williams once lifted six bats, one by one, then unhesitatingly picked out the weapon that was a half-ounce heavier than the others. Carew sent a recent shipment of bats back to Hillerich & Bradsby, maker of the famed Louisville Slugger. His exasperated explanation: "Every one was the wrong weight, and the handles were all too big." Interpretation: the wood was not shaved within the proper tiny fraction of an inch of perfection. Like all the other great hitters, Carew scrupulously cares...
...Some of Hillerich's best friends are trees. Though some of the timber used in his bats is grown on the company's 500-acre tract in Pennsylvania, he is always on the lookout for good timber. H. & B. has found that white ash grown on eastern or northern slopes has a bat's best qualities-resiliency and strength. The most important ingredient is careful labor. So skilled an art is hand fashioning that H. & B. has only four qualified bat turners, overseen by 65-year-old Fritz Bickel. Bat turning, says Bickel, "is like painting...
Built-in Hits. Bud Hillerich's father was an apprentice in his father's small wood-turning shop one day in 1884 when a local ballplayer, Pete ("Old Gladiator") Browning, broke his bat. Young Hillerich offered to make Browning a new one. The next day Old Gladiator rapped out three hits. Ballplayers figured that young Hillerich made bats with hits in them, rushed to place orders. By 1904 John Sr. was a full partner in the firm. He started an advertising trend by getting famous players to endorse his bats, wrested the professional bat market away from front...
...industrial baseball has pushed sales up 30% in the past ten years. H. & B. expects to be producing 5,000,000 bats by 1962 or 1963. Though the family-owned company keeps its profit figures to itself, they are hefty enough to keep a spacious box for Bud Hillerich at Churchill Downs, where he likes to get away from it all by sizing up thoroughbreds instead of sluggers...