Hillerich & Bradsby 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. In fact, for a brief time in the 1880s, he even turned away ball players. Bud, however, saw the potential in producing baseball bats, and the elder Hillerich eventually relented to his son. The bats were sold under the name "Falls City Slugger" until Bud Hillerich took over his father's company in , and the name "Louisville Slugger" was registered with the U.S. Patent Office. In , Honus Wagner signed a deal with the company,
Hillerich & Bradsby son, John "Bud" Hillerich. Legend has it that Bud, who played baseball himself, slipped away from work one afternoon in 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. Bud invited Browning to his father's shop to hand-craft him a new bat to his own specifications. Browning accepted the offer, and got three hits to immediately break out of his slump with his new bat the first day he used it. Browning told his teammates, which began a surge of professional ball players to the