Latest news with #LouisvilleSlugger
Yahoo
6 hours ago
- General
- Yahoo
No UF job, no dignity, no self-respect: Was it really worth it, Santa Ono?
My father died in 1999 – yet 26 years later I still find myself constantly drawing from his bottomless well of sage wisdom, straight-shooting common sense and exquisitely timed advice. OK, OK, OK. There was that one time when my dad, weary of the 11-year-old me hounding him to let me try chewing tobacco so I could imitate Sparky Lyle – one of my favorite baseball players – intentionally withheld some advice that definitely would have been handy: When you chew tobacco, you spit out the juice. You don't swallow the juice!!!!!!! That realization hit me not long after I took the chaw of tobacco out of my mouth. Unfortunately, however, it also hit me after I had projectile vomited across the kitchen table while eating the apple pie my mother gave me and my brothers for our evening snack. (No, I've never touched chewing tobacco again. And, yes, I do suspect that's exactly what my father had in mind when he 'forgot' the 'spit out the juice, son' part.} But . . . anyway . . . I can say I also remember a piece of advice that my dad was willing to share with me – and thankfully so: 'Rog,' he said, 'if you ever fail and fall, do it holding on to your principles and dignity. It won't hurt as much when you hit the ground – and it'll be much easier when you get back up.' Which leads me to these questions: Won't it be painful for Santa Ono to get up off the ground after appearing to toss aside both his principles and dignity in an unsuccessful bid to become the University of Florida's president? Won't it be difficult for Ono to rise to his feet after bending one knee at the altar of 'We hate diversity, equity and inclusion' sycophancy – only to have a Louisville Slugger smashed across both of them by the anti-DEI sycophants he was pathetically pandering to please? Was any of this degrading self-debasement worth it? Was any of this open groveling worth the effort to win the 'privilege' of doing that dumb Gator Chomp on Saturday nights during UF Gators football games? Any of it? By now, everyone knows the story of Ono. You know, he's the former University of Michigan president who: Used to be an avid supporter of DEI as UM's leader. Cynically changed his views on diversity, equity and inclusion at UM to appease the divisive and obsessive anti-DEI movement, led by its high priest of toxic propaganda, New College of Florida Board Trustee Christopher Rufo. Abruptly resigned from UM to pursue the presidency at UF, whose trustees rubber-stamped him as the sole candidate for the job. Panicked when the 'woke-woke-woke-woke-woke' myna birds – led by Rufo (naturally) and Florida Congressman Byron Donalds (a 2026 Republican gubernatorial candidate) began swarming and pecking him over his past support for DEI. Opinion: Don't let politics rule UF president decision. Just look at New College. Wrote a widely distributed – and utterly servile – guest column in which he insisted that there couldn't possibly be a single person on Earth who despised DEI as deeply and as passionately as he did. Saw the University of Florida presidency snatched from his grasping hands when the Florida Board of Governors rejected UF's recommendation to give him the job. Now what's the one common thread regarding Ono in pretty much all of the above items? Sarasota Voices: A Conversation with the Opinion Page Editor It's the thread of one man appearing far too willing to treat both principles and dignity as expendable attributes, and he didn't even sacrifice them for a cause – sheer professional opportunism – that's particularly noble. And when you think about it, could there possibly be anything more nauseating than that? Um, actually, let me take that back – there is one thing that comes to mind. Opinion Editor Roger Brown can be reached at Follow him on X (Twitter) @RBrown_HTOpin. This article originally appeared on Sarasota Herald-Tribune: No UF president job for Ono, who bowed to anti-DEI fanatics | Opinion
Yahoo
11-05-2025
- Yahoo
Chicago man beat 62-year-old amputee with baseball bat on South Side, police say
The Brief 62-year-old Angelo Sutton remains hospitalized after the beating Carl Price, 27, was arrested minutes after the attack Police say a metal baseball bat was used in the assault CHICAGO - A 27-year-old man has been charged in connection with a violent beating that left a 62-year-old man hospitalized on Chicago's South Side last Friday. What we know The attack happened in the 7400 block of South Coles Avenue in the South Shore neighborhood, according to Chicago police. Police say Carl Price, a convicted felon from Chicago, allegedly beat Angelo Sutton with a metal Louisville Slugger baseball bat, striking him in the face, the back of the head, and across his body. Witnesses also told police that Price stomped on Sutton during the attack. Sutton, whose right arm is amputated, suffered blunt force injuries to his face and head, including multiple lacerations and fractures to his mouth and upper arm. He was taken to the University of Chicago Hospital, where he remains hospitalized. The baseball bat used in the attack was recovered from the scene. Police said Price was taken into custody minutes after the assault. He was transported to Trinity Hospital to be treated for a laceration to his forehead before being released. He was expected to appear in court on Sunday on two counts of aggravated battery. What we don't know It remains unclear what prompted the alleged assault.
Yahoo
09-05-2025
- Sport
- Yahoo
Look: Elly De La Cruz to get these pink torpedo bats for Mother's Day
When major league batters step up to the plate, they're usually accompanied by a black or brown bat. Except on Mother's Day. Every year, the MLB honors Mother's Day by partnering with organizations that raise awareness to help reduce breast cancer rates. Players support the cause by sporting pink gloves, cleats and, of course, a pink bat. Advertisement On Monday, bat manufacturer Louisville Slugger posted a sneak peek of the pink torpedo bat Cincinnati Reds' star Elly De La Cruz is set to use against the Houston Astros on Mother's Day, which falls on Sunday, May 11. "It's pink bat season, and we're gearing Elly De La Cruz up for Sunday," Louisville Slugger captioned its Facebook post. Louisville Slugger handcrafted De La Cruz's first-ever torpedo bat, which he used for the first time March 31 against the Texas Rangers. The Reds' shortstop went 4-for-5 with two home runs that day. De La Cruz's representatives at Boras Corporation made an urgent call to Bob Hillerich, an executive for Hillerich & Bradsby, the company that makes Louisville Slugger's bats, saying, "We need to see you now," following Opening Day weekend. The New York Yankees created headlines that first week when they crushed the Milwaukee Brewers in a three-day barrage of home runs with torpedo bats. What is a torpedo bat? According to the MLB, torpedo bats are defined by an untraditional barrel, which rests closer to the hitter's hands. The bats are designed to be skinnier at the top end, with noticeably more wood in the area around the label (where the hitter is most likely to hit the ball) to create a custom sweet spot. Whitney Pfister, left, operations director, and Kelly Coleman, pro bat lead operator, stack torpedo bats after they came out of a baseball bat lathe at the Louisville Slugger Museum & Factory in Louisville. The reconfiguration gives the bat the shape of a torpedo or, as some have pointed out, a bowling pin. Who makes torpedo bats? According to ESPN, the Yankees requested sample models of the torpedo-style bat from some of the league's 41 approved manufacturers. The model numbers for the spec bats started with "BP" for "bowling pin," a more accurate description of the bat's shape. Advertisement "Torpedo sounds kind of cooler," Aaron Leanhardt, a former Yankees front office staffer who is now the Miami Marlins' field coordinator and has received much of the recent credit for the implementation of torpedo bats, told ESPN. Hillerich & Bradsby worked with four pro baseball teams for about 18 months to design the torpedo barrel, the Courier Journal reported. This article originally appeared on Cincinnati Enquirer: Elly De La Cruz to get pink torpedo bats for Mother's Day. See here
Yahoo
07-05-2025
- Yahoo
New England's Unsolved: Henry Bedard's family still searching for justice
New England's Unsolved: Henry Bedard's family still searching for justice In Swampscott, the murder of Henry Bedard Jr. in 1974 still haunts investigators. The teenager was beaten to death with a baseball bat. His killer has never been identified. For the first time, Boston 25 News Reporter Bob Ward recently interviewed Henry's father, who says he never thought he would have to wait this long for justice. 'All I know is, whoever did it, has no conscience. No conscience. Just an animal,' Henry Bedard Sr. said. Bedard Sr. has lived half a century without knowing who viciously killed his son. Speaking to Ward from his home in Florida, Henry Sr. says he is losing hope. 'I'll probably die and never know,' Bedard said. Henry Bedard Jr. was 15 years old, a high school sophomore, when he died. On December 17, 1974, his badly beaten body was discovered in woods behind a Swampscott DPW Yard in an area known as Kite Hill, or Swampscott View. Investigators say Henry Bedard Jr. was murdered with a baseball bat. 'We have been told he was not just hit in the head with the baseball bat, but he was hit several times. And he was hit after he was down,' Lynda Bedard, Henry Sr.'s wife said. Henry Bedard Jr. was last seen alive in the afternoon of the day before. In Vinnin Square, Henry dropped off a roll of film to be developed at a CVS, and he looked for a Christmas present for his sister. Sometime between 3 and 3:30 p.m., DPW workers saw Henry walk down the street. And so did the late Swampscott Police Chief Peter Cassidy, as he told Ward in 2004. 'I just stopped the car, waved at him, he went across. He knew me and I knew him,' Chief Cassidy said. 'He just went up that way, which is the direction of where we found him.' The wooded area where Henry was found is near neighborhoods and an abandoned railroad line. The tracks are long gone. But in 1974, young people were familiar with the area. 'They would go up either from one of the side streets, or through the DPW yard and they would take those tracks, and kind of skip those side streets to get to where they were going,' Swampscott Police Detective Sgt. Candace Doyle said. She is now working the Bedard murder case. Det. Sgt. Doyle said a key piece of evidence that is still being is analyzed is the baseball bat, a 31-inch Louisville Slugger. 'This belonged to somebody in the town,' Doyle said. Carvings on the bat and what might be a 'K' continue to interest police. 'This marking right here on the top was homemade and is significant to the bat, and to the owner, we assume,' Doyle said. Fifty years later, Henry Bedard Sr. is still frustrated the bat's owner has never been identified. 'I mean, how many Little League teams in Swampscott? How many bats? Nobody knew anything about it,' Bedard Sr. said. In Swampscott, police are not giving up on finding Henry Bedard's killer. 'It's equally as important today as was back then in December of 1974,' Essex County District Attorney Paul Tucker said. Henry's Dad is not giving up either. He is just tired of waiting for justice. 'It would clear my mind for sure,' Henry Bedard Sr. said of the hope for an arrest in the case. 'I always said I would like to know before I die. Well, I'm 92 in a month. So how much longer have I got?' If you have any information about the murder of Henry Bedard in 1974, contact Swampscott Police at 781-595-1111 or Mass State Police at 1-855-MA-SOLVE. Download the FREE Boston 25 News app for breaking news alerts. Follow Boston 25 News on Facebook and Twitter. | Watch Boston 25 News NOW
NBC News
04-04-2025
- Automotive
- NBC News
Demand for torpedo bats is booming for batmakers
Baseball bat manufacturers had little evidence to suggest a spike in sales was just around the corner when Major League Baseball's newest season opened last week. It had been four years since physicists working for MLB teams had begun chatting with Louisville Slugger about how to increase the exit velocity of batted balls. Those conversations helped create a shape — resembling a bowling pin, with a thicker middle and a tapered barrel — that the company first turned into a real, wood bat in November 2023. Four teams contacted Louisville Slugger about the model, but when the so-called torpedo bat was introduced around big-league clubhouses last season, adoption was hardly widespread. On the eve of the new season, less than 10% of MLB hitters using bats made by Marucci Sports were using the so-called torpedo model, said Kurt Ainsworth, the company's chief executive. 'When you're a baseball player, you're used to some looking down the bat and it looks one way,' Ainsworth said. 'And then you see it, it looks kind of funny. Like, 'I don't really need that.'' That stance changed last weekend when the bats erupted into the public's attention — and with them, overnight big business. Ainsworth estimated that half of Marucci-affiliated hitters have now tried a torpedo model and said he expects that to increase to 80% by month's end. 'All I can say,' said Bobby Hillerich, a vice president of manufacturing and operations for Hillerich and Bradsby Co., the maker of Louisville Slugger bats, 'is that it's crazy.' 'There are 1,500 preorders for a bat that doesn't exist, and there's no website yet,' he said. 'Torpedo bats' officially entered the sports lexicon after the Yankees hit an MLB-record 15 home runs in three games, including a combined nine by five Yankees hitters using the new bats, which shift the 'sweet spot' closer to where hitters typically make contact. Sometimes, the shift can be as much as 6 inches. The bats' existence might have gone unnoticed, however, if not for Yankees broadcaster Michael Kay. On social media, a clip of Kay describing the bats' origin story — a Yankees study had found certain players weren't hitting the ball with the barrel of the bat, but lower toward its handle, prompting an MLB-approved design change moving more mass toward the handle — went viral. 'This has been all over the country and really around the world, people talking about bats and this bat design, and it just shows you the impact of what the Yankees can do when something happens there,' Ainsworth said. Ever since, phones have been ringing in the offices of the 41 MLB-approved batmakers. One such call came Monday morning from the Cincinnati Reds, who asked a Louisville Slugger executive and sales rep to drive samples to their ballpark 90 minutes away as soon as possible. Within hours, Reds star Elly De La Cruz was testing a sample torpedo bat in batting practice and liked it so much that he kept it for that night's game, in which he went 4-for-5 with two home runs. On Monday, Louisville Slugger had developed 20 different models with varying tapers, lengths and weights. By week's end, Hillerich estimates, that number will rise to closer to 70 to respond to MLB teams' requests for adjustments and to meet trickle-down demand it anticipates from youth and collegiate wood-bat leagues. One of the biggest wrinkles Hillerich has encountered is ensuring Louisville Slugger has enough wood — its company largely uses birch for MLB hitters — to meet demand. 'We have two log buyers that go out, and they usually go out once every two weeks,' he said. 'I told them to get on the road Monday morning and not come back.' For Marucci, which uses largely maple in its professional bats, sourcing wood isn't an issue, as it owns a timber company in Pennsylvania and two mills. (In addition, metal bats used in youth and collegiate leagues are Marucci's biggest seller, he said.) The logistical challenge has been turning around bats quickly enough for its roster of MLB players. At Marucci's headquarters in Baton Rouge, Louisiana, a bat tailored to an MLB hitter's specific swing and balance points can be produced and in the hitter's hands in about a week. Although Ainsworth said a true torpedo model might not make much sense for younger players, who rarely make contact in the same place and need larger barrels, the company clearly anticipates strong demand from the public, as well as the pros. By midweek, a banner had been placed across the top of the Marucci website leading to the company's three different torpedo models: 'The bat everyone's talking about is here.' Victus, a Pennsylvania-based batmaker Marucci acquired in 2017, had a similar landing page on its website. 'I will tell you that it has been a nice bump for the company,' Ainsworth said. Yet for Ainsworth, the biggest winner from the surge in interest produced by the bats was baseball itself. For years, the sport has battled an existential debate about whether it had enough stars with crossover cultural appeal and whether its slower pace of play and stodgy tradition could attract younger fans. For the past week, however, as the NBA playoffs and the NFL draft approach, the buzz has been about baseball. Louisville Slugger, which Wilson Sporting Goods has owned since 2015, has experienced sales spikes before. Rick Redman, a vice president of corporate communications at Hillerich and Bradsby who has worked in public relations for Louisville Slugger for 22 years, said the last time he could recall a product this hot was 2006, when Louisville Slugger produced pink bats for Mother's Day. And sales of souvenir bats quadrupled in 2016 when the Chicago Cubs broke a 107-year-old World Series drought, Hillerich said. Yet the demand curve for torpedo bats could look similar to the skyrocketing arc of one of the Yankees' weekend home runs, because, unlike a novelty item, they represent an innovation that could shake up a century-old game. Pitchers have used data and technology in recent seasons to throw harder. Hitters, meanwhile, were still playing catch-up by changing how, not what, they swung. For batmakers, that gap between hitters and pitchers created a market opportunity. Both Louisville Slugger and Marucci operate high-tech hitting labs to test their equipment. In recent years, Ainsworth, who played four MLB seasons as a pitcher before he co-founded Marucci in 2004, had become inspired by applying golf's use of different clubs for different purposes to baseball. 'You go into an industry that's been, I don't want to say stale for a while, but it's been in America's pastime, the player uses the same bat versus every pitcher,' he said. 'You don't use the same golf club for every shot. Why in baseball were we using the same bat?' In 2022, Paul Goldschmidt became the National League's most valuable player using a Marucci bat with a knob shaped like a hockey puck, which shifted the weight below the hitter's hands. The design differed from that of the torpedo bats, but the idea was the same: What is the optimal design to create the biggest opportunity for hits? Some have pushed back against the effectiveness of the new design, such as Milwaukee manager Pat Murphy, whose team allowed the 15 home runs to the Yankees. 'My old ass will tell you this, for sure: It ain't the wand, it's the magician,' Murphy told reporters last weekend. Not everyone agrees with the theory. Aaron Leanhardt, a former physicist who now works for the Miami Marlins, has been credited with working with various batmakers to develop the bowling-pin design during his time with the Yankees after he discovered that some Yankees hitters rarely made contact on the barrel. Both Marucci and Louisville Slugger officials said that the bowling-pin model first became a reality late in 2023 and that a few players used it last season, including New York Mets star Francisco Lindor and Yankees slugger Giancarlo Stanton, who hit seven postseason home runs using such a model. Cody Bellinger, then with the Chicago Cubs, tried a Louisville Slugger model but wasn't quite sold until he joined the Yankees this season and tested newer models tweaked to his preferences. He was among the torpedo users to hit home runs during New York's explosive opening weekend. Yet the shape went unscrutinized last year. Why, then, did it take nearly a year and a half for the torpedo bat to capture the zeitgeist and affect the bottom line? Hillerich agreed that the Yankees' national exposure, combined with the intrigue of a new innovation, 'just made for the perfect storm.'
