Louisville Slugger closes factory, museum after furloughing staff

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The maker of the iconic Louisville Slugger baseball bat has closed its factory in Kentucky and furloughed the majority of its employees due to the financial impact of the coronavirus pandemic, according to the Louisville Courier-Journal's Alfred Miller and Dahlia Ghabour.

"We're not doing any advertising," Hillerich & Bradsby CEO John Hillerich IV said Monday. "We've cut all our expenses (that) we can. We're just hoping we get back to normal before we run out of cash."

Hillerich said the company has been forced to furlough 171 workers because there's no incoming revenue.

He added that if the company doesn't start producing bats at its Pennsylvania mill soon, the logs used to make them may spoil.

Major League Baseball receives about 50,000 wood bats each year from the manufacturer.