History of Louisville, Kentucky charter member. While the Grays were a relatively short-lived team, playing for only two years, they began a much longer lasting relationship between the city and baseball. In 1883, John "Bud" Hillerich made his first baseball bat from white ash in his father's wood shop. The first bat was produced for Pete "The Gladiator" Browning of the Louisville Eclipse (minor league team). The bats eventually become known by the popular name, "Louisville Slugger", and the local company Hillerich & Bradsby rapidly became one of the largest manufacturers of baseball bats and other sporting equipment in the world. Today, Hillerich &
Kentucky Route 61 Elizabethtown, KY 61 begins a concurrency with US 62 from there through the I-65 Exit 94 interchange, all the way to just past Boston, in western Nelson County. KY 61 then runs further northward to Bullitt County (into Lebanon Junction and Shepherdsville) and then the Louisville-Jefferson County metro area, with major junctions with I-65, and then I-265 and I-264 (with access to I-264 eastbound only), along with US 150 (Broadway) before terminating in downtown Louisville at a junction with US 31E (East Main Street) at Louisville Slugger Field. Kentucky Route 61 Kentucky Route 61 (KY 61) is a long Kentucky