Worth Pro Bats - would love to see, I helped make them.

[oldworth]

Hello,

I would love to see pictures of your old Worth pro baseball bats, regardless of who's they were. My mom was the supervisor of the finishing department there, and I worked there throughout high school and during breaks from college. It was a significant part of my life for many years. I had a hand in making and finishing quite a few myself. Of course I have quite a few, but I just ran into a few on the net, and it brought back a lot of memories.

If anyone has questions about them or how they were made, I'll try my best to answer them.

[harpt]

Re: Worth Pro Bats - would love to see, I helped make them.

I have a couple...Rob Deer and Charlie Moore. I really like them. Below is a picture of the Rob Deer.

[oldworth]

Re: Worth Pro Bats - would love to see, I helped make them.

I really liked the bigger logos. Everyone started making them bigger from what I heard, to be seen on TV, but MLB issued size restrictions.

[jon_8_us]

Re: Worth Pro Bats - would love to see, I helped make them.

Here is pics of my incoming Sheffield rookie bat from 1988:

[jon_8_us]

Re: Worth Pro Bats - would love to see, I helped make them.

I'll post better ones when i can take the pictures
jon

[oldworth]

Re: Worth Pro Bats - would love to see, I helped make them.

It's kindof odd seeing them. I look at them and see the people who did each part of them. All were made by a small group of people - no more than a dozen.

[thomecollector]

Re: Worth Pro Bats - would love to see, I helped make them.

Here's one of my Thome bats. I have only seen 2 of these Worth bats used by Thome. The other one was cracked.

[oldworth]

Re: Worth Pro Bats - would love to see, I helped make them.

The name looks familiar to me. A ton of players ordered bats from different manufacturers and may never have used them outside of batting practice. I remember looking on baseball cards for our bars and being disappointed when I would see a player I knew we made bats for using a different brand in all the pics.

The rarest bat I remember making was Michael Jordan's bat. As far as I know, it was the only Wilson branded pro bat ever made. (All Wilson bats were made by Worth)

[metsbats]

Re: Worth Pro Bats - would love to see, I helped make them.

Worth bats were very popular with members of the 86 Mets.

I have 3 and in addition to these guys i know the following players used Worth bats too

Dykstra
Foster
Staub
Sisk
Teufel

-David

[woodbat]

Re: Worth Pro Bats - would love to see, I helped make them.

Hi,
I have been to the Worth factory in Tullahoma a couple times. There was a gal that, I believe worked in sales, and I used to send her all the cards showing Worth bats used by major league players. Can't remember her name though, this was probably in the late 80's--early 90's. But I sent her a lot of cards. She said she was going to make a display of them at the office. It was about the time you all were thinking about getting got out of the wooden bat business and going to aluminum bats. Was also fascinated watching the gals lacing the softballs...
I only collect Cardinal bats, and have a game Worth bat of Jose Cruz, Randy Hunt, Bryn Smith, and John Tudor.
There was a very interesting article by Tim Lee in the SCD May 17, 1996-page 160-161 on Worth bats. Might be helpful if you had access to ordering and shipping records to share with other folks, could help in dating a bat. I would also be glad to make you a copy of this article..
If you want any photos of the above four bats, email me at woodbat@bellsouth.net and will be glad to email photos to you.
Don Bell
Paris, TN 38242-0446

[TNTtoys]

Re: Worth Pro Bats - would love to see, I helped make them.

I have 2 WORTH bats from members of the 1986 Mets team - Lenny Dykstra and Tim Teufel. When I can manage to swipe the digital camera from my wife, I'll take a couple of quick photos for you...

[oldworth]

Re: Worth Pro Bats - would love to see, I helped make them.

Woodbat - there were displays of ballcards featuring Worth bats both in the bat office and I believe over in Parish Hall at the ball plant. My guess as to the lady you remember would be Wanda - red headed lady. Other than her, it could be a number of others.

I clearly can picture seeing Jose Cruz bats.

As far as ordering and shipping records, I have no idea where they are. I would guess boxed up in the abandoned plant office. I do remember handwritten logs of orders filled at the lathe. As for other paperwork, I guess someone coded orders into the computer and recorded shipments. The company sold out to Rawlings, etc. and they shut down everything in Tullahoma and moved it to China.

As far as changing - it never happened. There was an aluminum plant on the property since the 70's I guess (could have been a converted hanger), and they built a second one probably in the 80's. The wood bats were there for a long long time in a totally separate building which used to be a WWII aircraft hanger. They closed it up, but had always been making the aluminums.

As far as dating a bat, you can only guess the period in most cases from the labeling. Even with the records, the only way to date a bat would be if the player only ordered once or twice, or if they only ordered a limited number of a certain color. Otherwise, orders were run repeatedly throughout the years.

Metsbats: I clearly remember seeing Mookie Wilson and Ray Knight bats. Somehow or another I wound up getting a signed 8x10 of Greg Jeffries through the company, even though I wasn't really a fan. My mom just bright it home to me.

TNT: I remember seeing Lenny Dykstra and Tim Teufel names as well. Most of the ones I can remember I most likely saw a number of times in there.

[oldworth]

Re: Worth Pro Bats - would love to see, I helped make them.

The machine used to brand the Handcrafted, name and model was ancient. I had removable plates aboust the size of a postcard with removable letters, and bars for Handcrafted and model. The handcrafted and model should be the same on almost every bat - they may have been replaced once.

It had a interchangeable roll of colored plastic on it about the size of toilet paper that was placed between the bat and the stamp that was heated. The other end hung free. You stepped on the petal, it lowered the plate on the bat and rolled it across it leaving invisible film on the plastic where the letter were removed. It took a lot of setup pieces to adjust it to make all the letters come out.

Also, up until about 1990ish, the stripes were done by a little 70yr old lady by hand with a paint brush. About that time, they got her a roller paint applier. You can see the difference as the roller left mild rib marks in the stripes.

As for knob markings, they can vary a lot in spacing and lining up, etc. Each number or letter was done one at a time with an individual stamp. The bats were lined up in a rack and each one was hit with a hammer.

Something I would love to know what happened to was the old bat collection they had locked up in a storage building. They had original, game used bats from hundreds of old players like Mickey Mantle, Hank Aaron, Babe Ruth. My jaw dropped the first time I went in there. I never even knew they had them in there, it was just a locked old storage building for junk I thought. I wouldn't doubt if they are still in there since they just closed the doors on the place and moved to China.

[oldworth]

Re: Worth Pro Bats - would love to see, I helped make them.

The Jim Thome bat was striped manually with the roller applicator by the little old lady (most likely, but could have been me or a couple of others). The larger logo'd bats would most likely have been done by her, but with a paint brush.

[MSpecht]

Re: Worth Pro Bats - would love to see, I helped make them.

Gregg Jefferies