Title:
The Making of the Best-Known Bat in Baseball, and
Pop Culture
Description: This is
a VOA Special English General News Report.
See text below
Text:
A German immigrant family opened a wood-turning
business on the Ohio River in 1856. J.F. Hillerich
wanted to manufacture traditional products, like
butter churns. His son Bud, a sports lover, wanted
to make baseball bats. Today, the company, now
called Hillerich and Bradsby, is world famous. P.J.
Shelley works at its headquarters in Louisville,
Kentucky.
P.J. SHELLEY: "We make 2,500 bats a day, on average.
During peak production, around spring training time,
we can make as many as 5,000 bats a day. We make 1.8
million wood bats here every year. Fortunately for
us, the young son prevailed and we're not making
butter churns any longer."
Hillerich and Bradsby makes the Louisville Slugger,
a favorite of baseball players for more than a
century. Baseball great Jackie Robinson used this
bat.
P.J. SHELLEY: "When people think of baseball bats or
especially, certainly wood baseball bats, they're
thinking of a Louisville Slugger."
The name Louisville Slugger has appeared in books,
movies and popular music. Carrie Underwood sings of
hitting a boyfriend's car with one in her song
"Before He Cheats."
Danny Luckett has worked at Hillerich and Bradsby
for 40 years. In the past, the company could produce
a hand-made bat in 15 minutes. With computers, it
now takes only a few seconds. Every bat must pass
Luckett's inspection before it leaves the factory.
The company keeps 9,000 copies of its most famous
bats.
DANNY LUCKETT: "Well, yeah, right here in hand's
reach is actually the model that we used to make
Babe Ruth's bat. This was the model that they used
when Babe Ruth would order his bats. They would come
and get this out of the model room, figure out what
weight he wanted, figure out what weight it took to
make the bats, and turn his bats off of that one."
Thousands of baseball stars have signed business
deals with Hillerich and Bradsby over the years. The
company has permission to sell copies of their bats
to less famous players. Baseball players at all
skill-levels use lots of bats during a season.
DANNY LUCKETT: "Oh, everyday players will probably
go anywhere from, uh, 12 to 14, 15 dozen bats in a
season. That's counting batting practice and
whatever. They get bats -- when they get them, they
go through them and pick out the ones they want for
the game. They pick out the ones they want for
batting practice. And they pick out the ones that
they want to sign and sell to their friends or
whatever."
As a result, Luckett never has to worry about
staying busy. I'm Shirley Griffith.
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Hi. I
personally reviewed this video and found it appropriate for
the news section of English Global Group. This
is a Voice of America video which covers an interesting
topic in Special English. I would appreciate some feedback from both
students and teachers about this video. You can comment in
the window below using any of a number of different services
including Facebook, Yahoo, AOL, and Hotmail.
