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The Tip is 'Keep eyes open' After reading an article about items made in America I thought about how many times I make purchases without thinking. I'm usually focused on budget and needs. Prior to reading this article on made in the USA products, I rarely thought about the importance of buying made in USA products. This helps create jobs in our country. Now I keep my eyes open and I am surprised how easy it is to find American products. It only takes a few seconds to look. Now I make a point when I am shopping to search for made in America brands. By doing so, I'm able to identify more and more what products are made in America. Even with my eyes open to made in USA I can get discouraged. Sometimes store clerks don't know the country of origin which can be frustrating. If this happens use your eyes to find the origin information yourself. Look at the labels and when you find a Made in USA product tell the clerk so the next time they are asked they will know. Also, when the label is not easily seen I use the other made in America buying tips to help me find made in USA. If the store doesn't carry what you are looking for, use Made in America Secrets to find it and tell the manager about your experience at their store. When enough people are asking for made in the USA products, more stores will begin to carry products that are made here. This technique does work. I also pick and choose the stores I visit. I do this because I have found that some stores are made in America friendly while others are not. Keep your eyes open for the made in USA label and pretty soon you will be able to identify which products are made in the USA. Buying Tip Continued - Read more on Made in America Products by 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 growing woodworking shop in Louisville, Kentucky, in the 1880s when Bud began working for him. 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 Browning, mired in a hitting slump, broke his bat. Bud invited Browning over to his father's shop to make him a new one. With Browning at his side giving advice, Bud hand-crafted a new bat from a long slab of wood. Browning got three hits with it the next day. From butter churns to baseball history Browning told his teammates, which began a surge of professional ball players to the Hillerich shop. Yet J. F. Hillerich had little interest 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 even turned away ball players. Bud persisted, he saw the future in bats. His father, pleased with his son's enthusiasm, relented. The rest is baseball history. In 1894, with Bud Hillerich taking over from his father, the name Louisville Slugger was registered with the U.S. Patent Office. In the early 1900s, the growing company pioneered a sports marketing concept by paying Hall of Fame hitter Honus Wagner to use his name on a bat-a practice continued with Michael Jordan, Tiger Woods and so many other professional athletes in virtually all sports today. By 1923, Louisville Slugger was selling more bats than any other bat maker in the country. Baseball was the nation's most popular sport, and legends like Babe Ruth, Ty Cobb and Lou Gehrig all swung Louisville Sluggers. 120 years and still leading the game Some 120 years have passed since Bud Hillerich crafted that very first bat for Pete Browning. During that time, Louisville Slugger has sold more than 100,000,000 bats, making it without question the most popular bat brand in baseball history. Louisville Slugger continues to dominate the game in both wood and aluminum bat categories. 60% of all Major League players currently use Louisville Slugger. And in the past decade, seven national college baseball champions hammered their way to the top with Louisville Slugger TPX bats. In recent years, Louisville Slugger has gone far beyond bats, providing performance technology in the form of fielding and batting gloves, helmets, catchers' gear, equipment bags, training aids and accessories. In addition to its on-field performance products, Louisville Slugger offers personalized, miniature, commemorative and collectible bats. So what would baseball be like if young Bud Hillerich had followed his father's urging and devoted his efforts to making swinging butter churns? We don't even want to think about it. |
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