Trip to Indy, Part 4 – The Trip Home

The day after the race, we packed up and left Indianapolis fairly early.

The highlight of our return trip was a visit to the Louisville Slugger factory in Louisville, Ky.  Almost all of the bats used in Major League Baseball are made there.  We took a tour of the factory and got to see the machines that make the bats in action.

The bats that they make for retail sale and for most minor league players are made on a set of 5 or 6 machines that carve a piece of wood into a bat based on a metal template.  It amazed me that these machines can make a bat in less than 60 seconds.  They still have to burn the logo into the bat and treat it with a lacquer finish after they come off of the machine, but the process of actually carving the bat takes less than a minute.

They have one single machine that makes the major league bats, and it is the only machine of its kind in the world.  There is a computer attached to this machine that contains the specifications for over 3,000 different bats, and the machine carves the bats based on the specs fed to it by the computer.  We saw some bats that they had just finished making for Ken Griffey, Jr.

As part of the tour, we got to see their collection of baseballs that had been signed by various Presidents of the United States.  They had baseballs signed by every President going back almost all the way to 1900.  There was an information card there that indicated Calvin Coolidge said “Baseball is our national game”.  I knew he had to say something or he’d never have gotten to be President.

We also were given a miniature replica bat as part of our tour.  At under $10, I’d definitely recommend the tour to any baseball fan.

There is also a museum there containing many historic bats.  Admission is free, so you can visit the museum even if you don’t take the factory tour.  There were bats there used by many of the most well-known baseball players of all time – Babe Ruth, Mickey Mantle, and even Honus Wagner, to name a few.

One of Babe Ruth’s bats that was on display had an interesting story connected to it.  Someone had found it in a garage where it had sat forgotten for many years.  When they examined it, they found that not only was it a Babe Ruth Louisville Slugger, but it actually had been personally autographed by Ruth.  They did some research and discovered that it was the bat with which Babe Ruth hit his last home run.  The bat is currently on loan to the museum, but it is worth so much that the owner plans to eventually sell it to finance their kids’ college education!

There is also a large gift shop at the factory, where I got my name engraved on a miniature bat.  No, I’m not a kid anymore, but I still thought that was cool.

Something that surprised me about Louisville Slugger is that the factory itself is pretty small, and they only have a total of around 200-300 employees.  For a factory that produces almost of the bats used in Major League Baseball, I guess I expected to find hundreds of machines and thousands of employees.

Our other major excursion in Louisville was to go across the Ohio river back into Indiana in order to visit the largest riverboat in the United States.  Of course, there’s a casino in it, which is why I wanted to visit it.  I’m not a big gambler, but I like to visit casinos occasionally if I’m in a place that has one.

Indiana is one of those states where only riverboat casinos are legal – you aren’t allowed to build a casino on dry land.  I have no idea why, but several states are like that.  It seems to me that casinos should either be legal or not – I don’t know why it matters if it’s on water.  The way this casino was built, it seemed obvious to me that it stays docked all the time, although I’ve heard the riverboat casinos are actually required to leave dock in some states.  The restaurants and hotel at the casino (The Horseshoe South Indiana) are all built on land, with a bridge crossing the road to the casino.  You actually can’t tell you’re on a boat at all when you’re in the casino.

The other highlight of our trip home was a meal at Steak ‘N’ Shake!  I had a portabello mushroom steakburger with a side of cheese fries and a cookie dough milkshake.  Great food!

After our meal, we drove the rest of the way home, and our trip came to its conclusion.  I must say it was one of the most enjoyable trips I’ve been on.

Trip to Indy, Part 3 – Indianapolis Motor Speedway

On Sunday, we attended the Allstate 400 at the Brickyard.  I’d been to the track many years earlier for a tour, but this was the first time I’d been to a race there.

We knew going in that we wouldn’t be able to see the entire track.  I’ve never understood why, but in addition to the usual grandstands around the outside of the track, the Indianapolis Motor Speedway has large grandstands inside the track infield behind pit road.  These stands block the view of everyone sitting along the front stretch, and I’ve never understood why they were built.  If they weren’t there, everyone would be able to see the whole track.  As it was, we could only see the front stretch and turn 1.  We watched all of the other action on a big screen TV.

One good thing about our seats is that we were right at the exit of pit road, and several of the top cars were pitting right in front of us.  Due to the frequent cautions, there was a lot of action in the pits.

This was a very unusual race due to tire problems.  The cars could only run 10 laps before the tires were completely worn out.  After 4 cars crashed in 3 seperate incidents early in the race, Nascar decided to throw a caution flag every 10 laps for the rest of the race so all of the drivers could come in a change tires.  I’ve never seen such a thing happen in all of the years I’ve been watching Nascar.  I suppose they were afraid some of the drivers would try to stay out too long and there would be more crashes.

While I would have preferred to see a more traditional Indianapolis Motor Speedway race with some long stretches of green flag racing, I still enjoyed the race.  The racing was actually very good while they were under green.  The cautions kept the field bunched up, so it was exciting.  Jimmie Johnson was the winner.

After the race, we had supper at Carraba’s Italian Restuarant.  While there is one not too far from where I live, I hadn’t tried it before.  I can’t begin to remember the name of the dish I had, but it was lightly breaded scallops with a sauce that reminded me of a stone-ground mustard.  As a side item I had some sort of pasta with a spicy marinara sauce, as well as a house salad with creamy parmesan dressing.  I pretended there was no possibility of the dressing containing any mayonnaise.

After that, we just hung out at the hotel and took it easy until time for bed.