Keep your fielders on their toes with the Louisville Slugger K100
all-purpose wood fungo bat. Designed for baseball practice, the K100 is
made of northern white ash--pound for pound the strongest timber
available. The ash construction offers a flexibility that isn't found in
other timbers, including maple, helping create a larger, more forgiving
sweet spot in terms of breakage. The bat also offers a thinner barrel
and a lighter weight than traditional bats, so it requires less effort
to hit balls to any part of the field. Specific features include a
2-1/4-inch barrel, a 36-inch length, and a natural finish.
About Louisville Slugger
In many ways, the rich 120-year history of the Louisville Slugger
baseball bat began in the talented hands of 17-year-old John A. "Bud"
Hillerich. Bud's father, J.F. Hillerich, owned a woodworking shop in
Louisville in the 1880s when Bud began working for him. Legend has it
that Bud slipped away from work one afternoon in 1884 to watch the
Louisville Eclipse, the town's major league team. After Pete
Browning--the Eclipse's star who was mired in a hitting slump--broke his
bat, Bud invited him to his father's shop to make a new one. With
Browning at his side giving advice, Bud handcrafted a new bat from a
long slab of wood. Browning got three hits using the bat the next day.
Browning told his teammates, which began a surge of professional
ballplayers visiting the Hillerich shop.
Although J.F.
Hillerich had little interest in making bats, Bud persisted, eventually
registering the name Louisville Slugger with the U.S. patent office in
1894. In the early 1900s, the company was one of the first to use a
sports endorsement as a marketing strategy, paying Hall of Famer Honus
Wagner to use his name on a bat. By 1923, Louisville Slugger was the
selling more bats than any other bat maker in the country, with such
famed clients as Babe Ruth, Ty Cobb, and Lou Gehrig. In the ensuing
years, the company has sold more than 100 million bats, and 60 percent
of all Major League players currently use Louisville Sluggers. The
company now sells far more than bats, including fielding and batting
gloves, helmets, catchers' gear, equipment bags, training aids, and
accessories.