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

[TNTtoys]

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]

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]

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]

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]

Gregg Jefferies

[ironmanfan]

OldWorth..While you probably wouldn't want to admit a hand in making this particular bat (due to the name misspelling), I still think it's a neat piece of lumber. It was used by Billy Rip during Spring Training 1987 (I have several photos of Billy using this Worth model with the misspelling)

[TNTtoys]

Here are my two, as promised... enjoy!!

[JasonM33]

As many of you know Jose Canseco is my favorite player and the only guy that I collect. He used Worth bats early in his career. This is one I picked up recently and I think it's beautiful.

-Jason M

[big10champ]

I have two Randy Bush models, a Junior Ortiz, and a Dan Gladden. It appears the Dan Gladden, Gladden scracked off the black on the handle and made his own two-tone gamer. They are nice pieces to add something different between all of the Louisville Sluggers.

[oldworth]

I actually have a Canseco bat. It never made it into his hands, but I prize it just the same. He was my favorite back then. As far as I know, all of his from Worth were unfinished.