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 &
Slugger Ann work was inspired by the people who came to Slugger Ann's. Slugger Ann gave Candy Darling a job working as a barmaid. She got her nickname "Slugger Ann" from working as a taxi dancer in the 1920s and 1930s in New York City. If a man would attempt to grope her while she was dancing, she would swing at him. This behavior would come in handy when she opened a bar on the corner of 12th and 2nd Avenue, near St. Mark's Church in the early 1950s. She could be found everyday at the bar. She lived in an apartment