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Welcome to HousePlans.Guru, this is the inspiration for our mission.

Thanks to our success mentor, Darren Hardy, we were led to an interesting story about how the Louisville Slugger came to be.

In many ways, the storied 132-year history of the Louisville Slugger baseball bat began in the talented hands of 17-year-old John A. “Bud” Hillerich. Back in the 1880s, Bud was working at his father’s woodworking shop in Louisville Kentucky.

Legend has it that Bud, a lover of baseball and a player himself, slipped away from work one afternoon in 1884 to watch Louisville’s major league team, the Louisville Eclipse. Bud was in the stands as the team’s star, Pete Browning, mired in a hitting slump and broke his bat.

Legend has it that Bud, a lover of baseball and a player himself, slipped away from work one afternoon in 1884 to watch Louisville’s major league team, the Louisville Eclipse. Bud was in the stands as the team’s star, Pete Browning, mired in a hitting slump and broke his bat.

Sensing an opportunity, Bud invited Browning over to his father’s shop where he offered to make him a new bat. With Browning at his side giving advice, Bud hand-crafted a new bat from a long slab of wood. Browning debuted the bat the very next day and got 3 hits.

Browning told his teammates about his new bat, which sent a surge of professional ballplayers to the Hillerich shop. Yet Bud’s father had little interest in making bats; he saw the company future in stair railings, porch columns, and swinging butter churns. For a brief time in the 1880s, he even turned away ballplayers.

But Bud persisted; he saw the future in bats. His father, pleased with his son’s enthusiasm, eventually relented. The rest is baseball history.

In 1894, Bud Hillerich took the business over from his father, and the name “Louisville Slugger” was registered with the U.S. Patent Office. By 1923, Louisville Slugger was selling more bats than any other bat maker in the country. Legends like Babe Ruth, Ty Cobb, and Lou Gehrig all swung Louisville Sluggers—the #1 bat of the most popular sport in America.

SOURCE: Direct Sports “The Story of Louisville Slugger Bats.”

After 130 years of “home run” profits, the company then sold its Louisville Slugger division to Wilson’s Sporting Goods for $170 million.

All because Bud decided to help one person.

Our mission is to help people design their homes and connect with professionals to assist them.

At HousePlans.Guru, we want to help you find the perfect house plan for your family home.

HousePlans.Guru is not like other “plan brokering” websites that keep the designers “secret.” Every home plan offered on HousePlans.Guru is managed by the original designer. You can directly contact the designer of the home plan you prefer and sort the catalog to feature their personal portfolio of house plans.

Our team of professionals believes architecture (specifically residential architecture) should be obtainable to all. Everyone who desires should live in a home, designed to their specifications, and with their input.

We accomplish this by providing affordable access to pre-drawn house plans, customization options, and by utilizing current home plan libraries with state of the art search tools.

In the comments below, let us know what you’re looking for and what you’ve experienced searching for the perfect plan.

Thanks for reading this far,
Steve Mickley, FAIBD
Curator and Collaborator