23 May 2024 Louisville, Kentucky

I enjoyed a trifecta of Louisville’s top attractions today: a tour of the Louisville Slugger bat factory, a visit to the beautiful Churchill Downs Track and a fun bourbon and bites tour thru NuLu.

My day started at the Louisville Slugger factory. You enter from the main street in downtown Louisville and it looks like a modern and beautiful museum …. and when you line up for the tour, doors open and voilà! They open right into the factory concealed behind the museum walls!

According to company legend, the first professional bat was created by 17 year old Bud Browning in 1884. Bud’s dad owned a local woodworking shop and young Bud played amateur baseball and had been making his own baseball bats along with bats for several teammates. The bat enabled the pro player to get 3 hits in his next game, and the rest is histor

Louisville Slugger makes about 2 million bats a year from mini bats for a little ones to very specific bats for professional players. Players decide whether they want their bats made from ash, maple or oak, and can choose the length of the bat, taper of the handle and many more features.

I actually found the bat making process to be very similar to my friend’s pencil making company that I visited early on in my adventure in Tennessee. For custom bats, exact specifications are fed into a CNC (Computer Numerical Control) machine that carves a wooden cylinder into a bat in only 48 seconds. Other parts of the factory have more automated mass production lines for consumer bats.

Once made, they need to be “decorated”. They can either get the logo burned into them, be painted or be covered in a layer of foil. They make lots of specialty bats for different occasions in all different shapes, sizes and colors. They are extremely proud of their “Bat Vault” which contains the originals of over 3,000 custom bats they have created and cataloged. Want to know what type of bat your favorite player prefers? They can tell you.

I left the Louisville Slugger facility and was headed back to my hotel when I saw a very funky car parked in the street. I saw “21C” on the license plate and realized it was the 21C Museum Hotel my friend Traci had told me about. It is a boutique hotel that has eclectic art exhibits in the main lobby …. And a bathroom that Traci said I could not miss seeing! I ventured in and checked out some of the art and the bathroom definitely did not disappoint: it has a one-way mirror so you feel like the people in the hallway can see in, and has live videos of eyeballs in the mirror that are looking at you while you’re washing your hands. What a crazy place !

Then it was off to the races! I headed to Churchill Downs and spent some time in their museum, watched an interesting movie about the history of horse racing and Churchill Downs, and then was taken outside to view the stands and the track. Actually surprised to find out that the track is not dirt but is more than 80% sand. It’s a lot softer for the horses to run on. I feel that I missed out by not buying a fancy hat or drinking a mint julep; I’ll have to return on a race day so that I can enjoy those both.

I returned my car to my hotel and walked a few blocks to the start of a “ Beyond the Barrel: bourbon and bites” tour. There were a total of 12 of us on the tour: 9 celebrating a friend‘s 40th birthday, a couple and me. First we tasted 2 straight bourbon pours at the store/bar where the tour began and then we hit the road. First stop was a Korean steak house which paired a Manhattan with Asian spices along with chicken wings and a bourbon soy sauce. Yum! The second stop was a fun hidden speakeasy that paired an old-fashioned with bruschetta and meatballs. They also a dessert drink that they served with cake. Then our last stop was a rooftop bar, but unfortunately it had started raining so we were inside. There, we enjoyed their signature drink the “Louisville” along with some chocolate bourbon balls crafted by a famous Louisville candy maker. Thankfully the rain ended before I had to walk back to my hotel and I was treated to a beautiful full double rainbow to end the day.