Hillerich & Bradsby Company (H&B) is an American manufacturing company located in Louisville, Kentucky that produces baseball bats for Wilson Sporting Goods, which commercializes them under the "Louisville Slugger" brand.

The company also operates the Louisville Slugger Museum & Factory in downtown Louisville, and produces gloves for sports such as golf, cycling, fitness, and gardening under the "Bionic Gloves" brand.[4]

Until 2015, H&B owned the "Louisville Slugger" brand. In that year they sold it to Wilson, although their factory still makes the actual baseball bats bearing that name.

History

The "Largest Bat in the World" outside the Louisville Slugger Museum & Factory

J. F. Hillerich opened his woodworking shop in Louisville in 1855. During the 1880s, Hillerich hired his seventeen-year-old son, John "Bud" Hillerich. Legend has it that Bud, who played baseball himself, slipped away from work one afternoon in 1884 to watch Louisville's major league team, the Louisville Eclipse. The team's star, Pete "Louisville Slugger" Browning, mired in a hitting slump, broke his bat.[1]

Bud invited Browning to his father's shop to hand-craft a new bat to his specifications. Browning accepted the offer, and got three hits to break out of his slump with the new bat the first day he used it. Browning told his teammates, which began a surge of professional ball players to the Hillerich woodworking shop.

J. F. Hillerich was uninterested in making bats. He saw the company future in stair railings, porch columns and swinging butter churns. For a brief time in the 1880s, he turned away ball players. Bud saw the potential in producing baseball bats, and the elder Hillerich eventually relented to his son.

Hillerich & Bradsby bat used by Babe Ruth in a 1927 game, exhibited at the Louisville Slugger Museum & Factory

The bats were sold under the name "Falls City Slugger" until Bud Hillerich took over his father's company in 1894, and the name "Louisville Slugger" was registered with the US Patent Office.[1] In 1905, Honus Wagner signed a deal with the company, becoming likely the first American athlete to endorse an item of sports equipment.[5]

Frank Bradsby, a salesman, became a partner in 1916, and the company's name changed to "The Hillerich and Bradsby Co."[1] By 1923, H&B was selling more bats than any other bat maker in the country, and legends like Ty Cobb, Babe Ruth (R-43),[6] and Lou Gehrig were all using them. R-43 is the company model number for the bats used by Babe Ruth.

In 1916, Hillerich and Bradsby began manufacturing golf clubs, eventually creating the PowerBilt brand for the clubs. Several major golf championships were won by players using PowerBilt clubs, including the Masters Tournament in 1967, 1971, 1979, and 1987.[7]

During World War II, the company produced wooden rifle stocks and billy clubs for the U.S. Army.[8] In 1954, the company purchased Larimer and Norton, Inc., a Pennsylvania lumber company to ensure a supply of hardwood for their products.

In 1976, the company moved across the Ohio River, to Jeffersonville, Indiana, to take advantage of the railroad line there. In 1996, the company returned to Louisville.