Louisville Slugger Museum & Factory celebrates 30th anniversary by revisiting its history

LOUISVILLE, Ky. (WDRB) — The Louisville Slugger Museum celebrated its 30th anniversary Tuesday morning.

The event featured photographs and replicas of the famous factory throughout the years, including images of the giant baseball bat outside the museum.

According to the museum's website, the factory started as a woodworking business in Louisville and moved to making bats in the late 1890s, eventually changing to Hillerich & Bradsby Co. During World War 1, the factory began producing M-1 carbine gunstocks, track pins for tanks and billy clubs for the armed forces as it continued making baseball and softball bats for the troops. During World War II, women began working in the factory for the first time.

The factory would later branch out from wood bats into aluminum bats in 1970, moving the factory over the Ohio River to Jeffersonville, Indiana, where it remained until 1995. In 1996, Hillerich & Bradsby Co. moved into its current location at 800 West Main Street, "about seven blocks from the carpentry shop" where the factory got its start.

Tuesday, leaders discussed the Louisville Slugger Museum's success over the years, including the factory's move from Jeffersonville back to Louisville.

"You know, the one thing I always learned about major projects like this is that if they're successful, nobody ever asks what it costs. But if they fail, everybody wants to know how much money was invested," said Jerry Abramson, Louisville's longest-serving mayor. "And so we did things to ensure that Louisville Sluggers were made in Louisville that we probably wouldn't have done for just a run-of-the-mill business. This was a really special opportunity, we felt."

John A. Hillerich IV, current president and CEO of Hillerich and Bradsby Co. and the great-grandson of Bud Hillerich — who introduced baseball to the family woodworking business in the 1800s — was also on hand for the celebration.

Since its opening in July 1996, the Louisville Slugger Museum has welcomed more than seven million guests and has won numerous national accolades. It was most recently named one of USA Today's Top 5 Attractions for Sports Fans Readers.

As part of the 30th anniversary celebrations, two new temporary exhibits are giving guests the chance to go back to 1996. The "Sticks of '96: Game-Changing Long Balls and Legacies" exhibit looks into "a landmark year in baseball" that saw rising stars Derek Jeter and Ken Griffey Jr. and the retirements of Ozzie Smith and Andre Dawson. It also highlights the 1996 World Series champion New York Yankees.

The "All That and a Bag of '96" exhibit is a "full-on nostalgia trip," the museum said. It celebrates the pop culture of 1996, featuring a "colossal wall display of more than 1,000 trading cards from 1996," along with classic VHS tapes and CDs. The temporary exhibits will be set up through the end of the year.

The 30th anniversary comes nearly a year after the Big Bat celebrated its 30th birthday.

The bat, installed in 1995, was made from a single piece of steel and hand-painted to mimic wood grain. It's modeled after Babe Ruth's Louisville Slugger, the R43. It stands 120 feet tall and weighs 68,000 pounds, leaning proudly against the museum's building on West Main Street.

To learn more about the new exhibits celebrating the museum's 30th anniversary, click here. To learn more about the Louisville Slugger Museum and Factory or purchase tickets for a visit, click here.