Going Batty

Not to make Colorado Rockies' fans jealous, but Alta and I got to hold Matt Holliday’s bat today. It was an appropriate punctuation to a 3,000-mile journey to see six baseball games in six different parks.

Matt’s bat, an ebony maple shaft, doesn’t feel a lot different from those used by guys like Alfonso Soriano, Derek Jeter and Albert Pujols. We got to hold those as well. Different colors, slightly different weights and lengths. But they all hit pretty much the same, at least I think they do.

We got to handle those tools of the baseball trade during a tour or the Louisville Slugger factory. The Kentucky factory is the only one in the world that makes the Sluggers, but there’s a different part of the factory that makes the pros’ bats. That’s where our tour guide took us after we watched a 10-minute movie with a lot of footage of some of baseball’s greats and how they used those Sluggers of the past.

They do make the pro’s bats with more care than those used by the kids in Little League but it is basically the same process. It also is fascinating to see how the wood cylinders are sawn out of tree trunks and then tapered on automatic lathes (they used to do it by hand). I thought bats were all made of ash, but the tour guide says the players have experimented with all kinds of wood. Now, he says, somewhat more than half the bats use maple, probably because Barry Bonds has used that wood. Maple breaks easier than ash, though.

There’s a display in the Louisville Slugger Museum and Factory with all the bats used by the Colorado Rockies in the 2007 World Series (there also is a display showing bats used by some team from Massachusetts). Each bat has the player’s name on it, near the hitting end.

We had a chance at the end of the tour to ask questions. I asked one that I didn’t get an answer on – how does a player get a “corked” bat. The movie before the tour had featured Sammy Sosa, who was rumored to have used a special bat. The tour guide said he had no idea where those might come from.

Road Food: Alta’s research tracked down Melissa’s Country Café in Versailles (pronounce that “vair-sales”) just west of Lexington, Kentucky. Melissa makes what is reputed to be the best “Hot Brown” dinner in Kentucky, something we might call an open-faced turkey-bacon-ham-and-cheese sandwich with a white sauce. We think it was created at the historic Brown Hotel in Louisville, but Melissa makes the best one now. It’s only on the dinner menu, which was a problem because we arrived about 1 p.m. after touring the nearby Buffalo Trace Distillery. We sent a message back to the kitchen that we’d driven all the way from Denver to eat Melissa’s Hot Brown and she was kind enough to make it for us. Melissa also came out from the kitchen to talk to us, which was nice of her. Her restaurant has been written up in the New York Times and Budget Traveler so she gets a lot of traveling foodies like Alta and I.

Getting Gas: It had to happen. We’ve driven more than 3,000 miles. Our Toyota Corolla rental car gets great gas mileage so we don’t have to fill up often. But we finally had to pay $4 for a gallon of gas, that coming in West Virginia.