Hillerich & Bradsby Hillerich & Bradsby Hillerich & Bradsby Company (H&B) is a company located in Louisville, Kentucky that produces the famous Louisville Slugger baseball bat. The Louisville Slugger Museum & Factory in downtown Louisville features a retrospective of the product and its use throughout baseball history. H&B also makes baseball gloves, golf clubs, golf gloves and other equipment (under the "PowerBilt" brand). In 2015, the company announced plans on March 23 to sell its Louisville Slugger division to sporting goods manufacturer Wilson Sporting Goods. J. F. Hillerich opened his woodworking shop in Louisville in 1855. During the 1880s, Hillerich hired his seventeen-year-old
Black Betsy his death in 1951. After his wife's death a few years later, it was bequeathed to her cousin and her son, Lester Erwin, who kept the bat on a bookcase for over 40 years. Erwin decided to sell the bat through Ebay in 2001. In a 10-day auction, it gathered two bids. The winner, Rob Mitchell, owner of a marketing company in Pottstown, Pennsylvania, won the bat for $525,100 plus a 10 percent buyer's premium. It was auctioned again at Sotheby's on December 10, 2005. Sporting goods companies Spalding and Hillerich & Bradsby both produced reproductions of the bat for