CORPORATIONS: Bats for Big Leaguers

The man who stands behind more whizzing bats in U.S. major league ballparks than even the busiest catcher is a slim, gregarious Kentuckian named John A. Hillerich Jr. “Bud” Hillerich, 49, is the president of Louisville’s venerable (76 years) Hillerich & Bradsby Co. In its rickety red brick factory, H. & B. turns out 60% of all U.S. bats, including the famed Louisville Slugger, used by almost all big leaguers. This year the company will produce more than 4,000,000 bats, ranging from a $1.25 model for Little Leaguers to $4.60 copies of big league bats. Most of the bats are machine-made, but some 120,000 are handturned to meet the demanding and often whimsical needs of the nation’s baseball heroes.

The Secret: Sympathy. To supply these needs, Bud Hillerich has learned to combine the persistence of a bleacher heckler with the sympathy of a wife. When it comes to bats, he has discovered, ballplayers are as sensitive as violinists. He follows the major league teams with the vigilance of a scout, roams across the U.S. chatting about bats in dugouts and dressing rooms. When Yankee Catcher Yogi Berra complained that he was not getting enough power out of his bats, Hillerich checked up, found that Berra had an unconscious habit of turning the trademark toward the ball, thus hitting against the grain and losing the bat’s resiliency. The solution: special bats made with the trademark running with the grain so that Berra could have his habit—and his hits. When Cardinal First Baseman Stan Musial grumbled that his bats had lost their “feel,” Hillerich hustled to St. Louis, discovered that Musial had worn down the handles a decisive %4th of an inch by scraping them against the dugout steps as he waited to bat.

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 and music. You’ve either got the exact touch or you haven’t.”

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-running Spalding Manufacturing Co.

“All they wanted in the old days was plenty of wood,” recalls Bickel. Ty Cobb swung a 42-oz. bat, and Babe Ruth sometimes used bats weighing 48 oz. But styles have changed, and players now prefer lighter bats that they can swing more quickly. The Cubs’ Ernie Banks uses a 31-oz. bat; the Giants’ Willie Mays never goes heavier than 33 oz. The shape has changed too. Only White Sox Second Baseman Nellie Fox still uses a thickhandled bat; the rest prefer a slim handle. H. & B. keeps an index of the types of bat it has made for some 40,000 major league players (many of whom have Louisville Sluggers named after them), often gets wires from players in a slump asking the company to “ship me the bats I used when I was hitting .325.”

H. & B. makes its reputation in the big leagues, its profits in the little leagues. The boom in junior and 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.