Louisville Sluggers
The Chinese care nothing about baseball. They are surrounded by it, though. The Taiwanese, South Koreans, and Japanese are all lovers of the game and all have multiple representatives in the Major Leagues - the Chinese have none, and probably never will. I have tried on many occasions to get the kids at the orphanage excited about baseball. They have shown little interest.
Our current tour stop is Louisville, KY, home of Churchill Downs, Muhammed Ali, and of course, the Louisville Slugger Factory and Museum. The place is obviously all about baseball. I was wondered how interested our kids would be. I was ecstatic, and quite frankly I didn't really care if the Chinese kids liked it or not, because Keegan and I were very excited (this part of our tour was actually not planned by me, our tour planner scheduled it and I offered no objections). I figured that even if the bat making and museum parts of the tour did not interest the kids they would at least be drawn in by the free mini-bat that they would receive at the end of the tour and the batting cages.
We gave the kids some quick pointers of how to hold and swing a bat, put a helmet on them, and threw them in the cage. They LOVED it. We first put them on the slow pitch softball machine. They then saw Uncle Jared step into the fast baseball machine. As you are choosing your bat you have a few Hall of Famers' bats to choose from. If it worked for Ted Williams then it can work for me (side note - Ted Williams said that without a Louisville Slugger he only would have hit .290). As I was in the cage channeling my inner Splendid Splinter the kids all decided that they wanted to try the fast machine as well which meant I had to buy another for every kid. It was my pleasure. The best $7 I have spent in a long time.
The girls were hungry and we had a 3:30 appointment rushing us along or else the boys and I would have spent all of our money and all of the skin on our hands in those cages. I'm not sure if their interest in baseball will stick, but for one afternoon in May of 2011 my boys were baseball fans, and I was the proud uncle of 5 Chinese boys with huge grins and horrible swings.
Unfortunately for Chad, it takes more than determination to hit a baseball
As the picture shows, Thomas how no idea how this works
Our current tour stop is Louisville, KY, home of Churchill Downs, Muhammed Ali, and of course, the Louisville Slugger Factory and Museum. The place is obviously all about baseball. I was wondered how interested our kids would be. I was ecstatic, and quite frankly I didn't really care if the Chinese kids liked it or not, because Keegan and I were very excited (this part of our tour was actually not planned by me, our tour planner scheduled it and I offered no objections). I figured that even if the bat making and museum parts of the tour did not interest the kids they would at least be drawn in by the free mini-bat that they would receive at the end of the tour and the batting cages.
We gave the kids some quick pointers of how to hold and swing a bat, put a helmet on them, and threw them in the cage. They LOVED it. We first put them on the slow pitch softball machine. They then saw Uncle Jared step into the fast baseball machine. As you are choosing your bat you have a few Hall of Famers' bats to choose from. If it worked for Ted Williams then it can work for me (side note - Ted Williams said that without a Louisville Slugger he only would have hit .290). As I was in the cage channeling my inner Splendid Splinter the kids all decided that they wanted to try the fast machine as well which meant I had to buy another for every kid. It was my pleasure. The best $7 I have spent in a long time.
The girls were hungry and we had a 3:30 appointment rushing us along or else the boys and I would have spent all of our money and all of the skin on our hands in those cages. I'm not sure if their interest in baseball will stick, but for one afternoon in May of 2011 my boys were baseball fans, and I was the proud uncle of 5 Chinese boys with huge grins and horrible swings.
Unfortunately for Chad, it takes more than determination to hit a baseball
As the picture shows, Thomas how no idea how this works
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