For my final tourist activity of Louisville, I went to the Louisville Slugger Museum & Factory. If you’re not familiar, the Louisville Slugger is a baseball bat formerly owned by the Hillerich & Bradsby Company, and now owned by the Wilson Sporting Goods Company. H&B still does the manufacturing of the baseball bats in Louisville, and also runs the museum.

For whatever reason, I was a massive baseball fan when I was a very young child. I followed the Chicago Cubs very closely, knew the names of an un­health­y number of baseball players, and watched almost all their games. And then, one year, I sort of… stopped being a baseball fan. I stopped watching baseball, I lost track of all the games and players, and I have absolutely no recollection as to why.

To put this into perspective, I believe this happened almost two decades ago, and since then, I haven’t really cared at all about baseball. I would play catch with friends once in a while, but because of my bad depth perception, I have a tough time catching balls (I usually have to stand at a little bit of an angle, then mostly go off timing in order to be able to effectively catch a ball), and I can almost never consistently successfully hit a baseball with a bat.

With that being said, it seemed like I was the only one at this museum who was this indifferent about baseball, because everyone had their favorite teams and were eager to see bats used by those players. It was interesting to see the Louisville Slugger Factory in-person, but it wasn’t really that special or magical of an experience.

Professional baseball players are fairly picky about the bats they use, so they often show up in-person at the factory to pick out a specific type of wood and design for their bats. We weren’t allowed to touch these because of the ongoing pandemic, but there was a large cabinet of baseball bat stocks se­lected by professional players.

We got to watch a CNC machine create a bat as well. Apparently this one had a bunch of famous baseball players’ signatures on the panels.

We then moved over to the branding section of the factory. Some are done by machine, while others are printed by hand by workers.

The final part of the factory had a section for painted bats. Apparently there are restrictions on the color of the bat for professional play, but obviously, for everyone else, they can get different-colored bats, and some people even order special novelty bats with special printing. Needless to say, this section of the factory smelled horrible because of all the paint, and I quickly got a headache.

After the guided tour was over, we were released into the main museum area and got to look at the exhibits at our own pace. I don’t know if this was main­ly because the Kentucky Derby Museum I went to yesterday was comparatively such a great museum, but the Louisville Slugger Museum felt in­cred­i­bly underwhelming. There weren’t that many exhibits, and the exhibits they did have were fairly non-interactive and relied on a lot of text and re­cre­ated models.

It seemed like there might have been a second floor of exhibits, but I couldn’t figure out a way to get up there—there were no easily-accessible stairs, and when I took the elevator, the upper area was blocked off by an “employees only” sign.

Right outside the museum exhibits, there was an area where you could swing in a miniature batting range, but you had to pay extra for that. The walls were covered with miniature plaques with hall of famers, but that probably won’t really be interesting to someone unless they are passionately dedicated to baseball and can recognize the names.

The guided walking tour through the factory was nice, and especially during the beginning portion of the factory, I really enjoyed the fresh processed wood smell. Funny enough, my second favorite part about going to this museum was the parking garage. When I park at a tourist hotspot, I always like to go on the upper-most floor of the parking garage in order to get a good view of the surrounding area; I parked on the fifth floor and took some photos of downtown Louisville.

My admission ticket was US$16.00, and I have a suspicion that the ticket price only covered the guided tour through the manufacturing factory, because that was the only time my ticket was checked (i.e., nobody was there to check my ticket when I wandered into the museum exhibit area). That price point is something you should expect to pay to go to one of the most popular tourist hotspots in a city, but comparatively, I don’t think you really get that much value out of this unless you’re a baseball fanatic.

That concludes my week in Louisville, Kentucky; next up is Knoxville, Tennessee.

For my second tourist activity of Louisville, I went to the Kentucky Derby Museum. The Kentucky Derby is an annual horse race and is often considered the “biggest” horse race in the world. It doesn’t have anywhere close to the biggest prize pool, but the passion and festivity that goes into the Kentucky Derby, as well as the amount of betting done on the race, definitely makes it the most popular.

I’m personally not really a big fan of horse racing, so I went into this museum fairly clueless. With that being said, I think the Kentucky Derby Museum is actually the best museum I’ve visited so far. It has high-quality exhibits, there are a lot of interactive things to do, there is a lot of variety in terms of what is available to do, and it was very effective in teaching me about the Kentucky Derby in a fun and memorable way.

My visit started with a walking tour of Churchill Downs, the race track. It was raining, but I obviously have limited time in Louisville, so I grabbed a hoodie, bundled up, and went anyway. Apparently rain isn’t really that big of a deal in Louisville, because there were a lot of other people in attendance at the museum, and apparently the race itself still goes on in the rain as well. In fact, the wetness and condition of the track is something that is recorded along with every race.

Next up was the showing of “The Greatest Race,” a short film about the Kentucky Derby presented on a 360° screen that wraps around an oval theater. It gave further details about the Kentucky Derby that the walking tour guide didn’t mention, and also showed some footage of the process of raising horses and training to participate in the Kentucky Derby. Above the theater, they had banners of the emblems of all the Triple Crown winners.

This short film was one of a few spread out throughout the museum; there were some other spotlights about other racing-related themes, such as a bi­og­ra­phy of one of the most successful jockeys, and a history of how women fought to compete alongside men in top-tier horse races. The “Ladies of the Derby” and “Right to Ride” exhibits were actually my favorites—there were life-sized cut-outs of the women so you could see how tall they were, and hearing their stories of successfully bringing lawsuits against arrogant men on the basis of the Civil Rights Act was very satisfying.

There was also a section of the museum where you could watch every single Kentucky Derby race available on video. I think just the nature of the Ken­tucky Derby makes for a great after-the-fact spectator sport, because all the videos are no longer than three minutes each, and it’s an insane surge of a­dren­al­ine and excitement, one after the other. The museum also set up a “betting booth” where you could pretend like you would input a theoretical $2, pick out your favorite horses, then watch the race and scan your ticket to see how much you would’ve theoretically won.

Another interactive part of the museum was a horse riding simulator, similar to one that you would see at an arcade. There was a kid already trying it out so I didn’t hop on myself, but it basically looked like a video game.

In addition to all of this, there were obviously also some traditional museum exhibits, with text, props, and audio. But, even then, I feel like the Kentucky Derby Museum takes traditional museum exhibits to the next level as well; for example, there was a decoy weight scale in the section about the size of the average jockey so people could step on and see just how much more they weighed than these athletes.

After enjoying everything in the museum, I took a look at the statue of Barbaro right outside the racetrack on my way out.

During the walking tour, the tour guide let us know that undefeated horse Barbaro had a tragic leg injury during his final race. Many people poured all their time and effort into treating Barbaro and assisting in his recovery. The process went on for over half a year, with surgery after surgery trying to address all the unexpected complications arising.

Apparently, horse leg injuries are not quite as simple as other four-legged mammals; although dogs can walk on three legs, horses cannot because of their weight, and lacking strength in one leg can result in too much weight being put on the other legs and further injuries forming. This is eventually what happened to Barbaro, and shortly before his death, he reached a point where he could not put his weight on any of his legs.

Barbaro was a fan favorite and there were a lot of people cheering on for his recovery. Upon his death, he was cremated and his remains were placed right outside Churchill Downs so fans could pay their respects without having to purchase an admission ticket.

My impression of horse racing has historically been negative due to the fact that I believed horse racing was abusive and exploitative of the horses.

Now of course, I’m not going to change my opinion based solely on going to a horse racing museum, obviously because the museum is going to be heav­i­ly bi­ased in favor of supporting horse racing. But, I did learn a lot more about the process behind the race, and it made me feel like raising the horses and rac­ing them is somewhat like a traditional owner-pet relationship (like playing fetch with your dog), but just on a much larger scale—a scale fitting of a horse.

The whips that they use are also apparently not a normal whip that you’d see that is designed to inflict pain. Apparently, horse racing whips are made out of a different material, are designed specifically to make a lot of noise, and are used as a controlling device in more ways than just striking the horse.

It is allegedly common knowledge in the equestrian community that punishing a horse with pain is not very effective, and could actually make the horse perform worse due to learned helplessness. On top of that, there is also supposedly legislation limiting the number of times a horse can even be hit with a whip at all during a race, so a lot of jockeys don’t actually ever make harsh contact with the horse using the whip.

It’s unfortunate that I didn’t actually get to see any real horses during this trip, but I’d say that this museum is very much worth it at a US$16.00 ad­mis­sion price, just based off the walking tour, movie, and museum exhibits. There are some pricier options available that offer you an inside look at the more exclusive aspects of horse racing, but for a normal civilian, I’d say that general admission is plenty.