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
History of Louisville, Kentucky Bradsby manufactures over one million wooden bats per year, accounting for about two of three wooden bats sold worldwide. In 1877 the Southern Baptist Theological Seminary relocated to Louisville from Greenville, South Carolina, where it had been founded in 1859. Its new campus, at Fourth and Broadway downtown, was underwritten by a group of Louisville business leaders, including the Norton family, eager to add the promising graduate-professional school to the city's resources. It grew quickly, attracting students from all parts of the nation, and by the early 20th century it was the second largest accredited seminary in the United States.