A Complete Reference Guide Louisville Slugger Professional Player Bats

[CaughtByTheGreyEagle]

Hello, checking to see if someone who owns the book would be so kind as to send me any info about Tris Speaker in the book. Itd be greatly appreciated. I think I have a gem but need a little more info to back it up.

[ooo-ribay]

Originally Posted by CaughtByTheGreyEagle

Hello, checking to see if someone who owns the book would be so kind as to send me any info about Tris Speaker in the book. Itd be greatly appreciated. I think I have a gem but need a little more info to back it up.

Tris Speaker is not in my (horizontal) Malta book. Weird.

This is from a book compiled by Dave Bushing and Dan Knoll. Not much info but it’s all I have.

Whoops. Picture is too large to upload. No model numbers provided. Just a length of 34-36 in. and a weight of 40 oz. Value $10-15,000.

[Trublubrucru]

This help?

[CaughtByTheGreyEagle]

Hello Trublubrucru, thanks for sending those pics. Excuse my ignorance, but regarding the text on the chart that reflects-.... His ##/##.#### off --- Can you advise, I'm assuming His is abbreviation for Histroy? Do you know what the text is referring to when it says "off" and then "name" ?

[Steve D]

Originally Posted by CaughtByTheGreyEagle

Hello Trublubrucru, thanks for sending those pics. Excuse my ignorance, but regarding the text on the chart that reflects-.... His ##/##.#### off --- Can you advise, I'm assuming His is abbreviation for Histroy? Do you know what the text is referring to when it says "off" and then "name" ?

If you let me jump in here, I might be able to help. I also have the book.

"His" simply means exactly what it says: His (Tris Speaker's) bat. The date is the date the order was catalogued by H&B.

The name after that is simply the name of the player whose bat was used as a "template" for (in this case, Tris Speaker's bat). This was before H&B started assigning model numbers to a player's bat.

Steve

[bat_master]

Originally Posted by CaughtByTheGreyEagle

Hello Trublubrucru, thanks for sending those pics. Excuse my ignorance, but regarding the text on the chart that reflects-.... His ##/##.#### off --- Can you advise, I'm assuming His is abbreviation for Histroy? Do you know what the text is referring to when it says "off" and then "name" ?

In these cases, the "his" refers to Tris Speaker as the model was made for him. When it says "off of" it means Tris Speaker had a bat made for himself off of another players bat. Typically players will take an existing model and make a slight change to it. The resulting bat is now "His model..."

Looking specifically at Speaker's records, there's a reference to "His 8/21/23 off Sheely, Earl". So Tris Speaker had an Earl Sheely bat that he returned to the factory for a slight modification. Could be a thinner or thicker handle, larger or smaller knob, larger circumference barrel, etc. The new model resulting from that change would then be referred to as "His 8/21/23" the original bat would have been side written with grease pencil and quite likely a lathe pattern bat would have been produced to use as a template for future orders.

I did also send you PM awhile back offering to help as I am fairly familiar with bats of this era since it's the main focus of my collection.