I spent the week in Louisville, Kentucky for meetings. I flew in on Sunday afternoon via Minneapolis. Louisville is the birthplace of Muhammed Ali.

Louisville has painted horses around the city. It is part of an event called Gallopolooza. In 2004 and 2009 they did horses.

In 2015, they did Bourbon, in the form of Mint Juleps.

The Louisville Bats were playing the Durham Bulls at Louisville Slugger Field. They are the Triple A farm team for the Cincinnati Reds. I bought a ticket for $13.50 two rows behind the dugout.

Their mascot is “Buddy” the Bat.

The game went to extra innings, I moved around to watch from different areas.

The final score was 4-3 Louisville in 14 innings, I only stayed until the 10th.

it was a nice stadium, although the draft beer was $7.60, a little pricey for a minor league park.

On the way back I stopped at the Visitor Centre and saw the Colonel.

A couple of blocks from the hotel was an area called Fourth Street Live, it has a lot of restaurants and bars.

On Monday afternoon, a few of us went to the Louisville Slugger Museum and Factory. There is a 120ft bat out front. It is a replica of Babe Ruth’s 34 inch Louisville Slugger bat.

Ken Griffey Junior.

Babe Ruth.

Ted Williams.

Derek Jeter.

There is a tour that takes you through the factory and it shows the bat making process from billet to lacquered finished product. A display showing how they cut the billets from a tree.

It use to take 30 minutes for someone to make a bat on a lathe. Now they use a CNC machine to make the professional bats in 50 seconds.

There was a special Lego exhibit, called Big Leagues, Little Bricks. Here is a replica of Wrigley Field made from 58,000 bricks.

This is a mural made from Lego bricks. It has the words to “Take Me Out to the Ball Game” spelled out.

Wrigley Field.

There is a signature wall that has all of the players that have signed contracts with the company. Only those that have a contract have their signatures burned onto their bats, other Major Leaguers who only order bats, have their name in block letters. I found early Blue Jays Doug Ault…

…and Rick Bosetti.

At the end of the tour we each got a miniature souvenir bat.

The Kentucky Derby is next weekend, so things will start to get busy this week. I’m pretty sure you won’t be able to get a room for the $134/night I paid this week.

The meeting was at The Brown Hotel, it was opened in 1923, until closing in 1971. In the 80’s it re-opened as a hotel and is now on the National Register of Historic Places.

There was a terrace on the roof that provides a 360 view of the city.

There is a ZeroBus (it is an electric bus) that is free in the downtown core.