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The Tip is 'Teach Grandchildren' One day, while I was on the Made In America Secrets site my granddaughter noticed and asked me what I was doing. I told her about the Big Secret and as I explained, she began to ask me more questions. After several minutes she left my office to play with her little sister. Months had gone by and until recently, I had forgotten about that moment. She was visiting again and I was talking to her about buying a custom printed T-Shirt. She immediately told me about a website that I could use to buy one. Wow I thought, she is only eight years old and already teaching me. The most amazing thing then happened, she said "Pops they sell Made In America T-Shirts". Thanks to her I purchased six custom Made In USA T-Shirts. Her name is Britton, she understands the Big Secret and I love it when she tells me her Little Secrets! Now she is ten and writing a screenplay called Mertastic. It is a story about a mermaid. Recently, she was visiting our house again and using my computer. She called me to come into my office and of course I came to her because that is what grandparents love to do. One of the reasons I love to be with her is because it is always interesting to see what she is up to. This time, she needed a mermaid tail for her movie, so we began to look around using Google. Her mother is a talented seamstress and will make the tail so we were looking for fabric that would be satisfy my granddaughter's vision of her mermaid tail. Once again we began to talk about Made in America and therefore started to investigate the country of origin of the fabrics she was considering. Because of that experience Made in USA fabric is now one of Made in America Secrets products. Thank you, Britton. 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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