Jackie Robinson "Purdue" bat
My dad used to play with a ton of store-model player bats when he was a kid in the late 1950s/early 1960s. My brother and I took over his “collection” when we were kids in the 1980s and we played with them in the back yard. We had dozens of them – almost any star player you’d want and all with varying degrees of handle types and weights: Banks, Kaline, Williams, Aaron, Fox, Snider, Aparicio….the list went on and on. As you’d expect, the bats were often broken and repaired and usually broken again.
When my parents moved from my childhood home a few years back, my brother and I divided up the bats. I think I came away with 4-5 that were NOT broken, and another 10-12 that had been repaired over the years, either by us or by my dad and his childhood friends. We probably threw away at least 20 of them over the years when they became “un-repairable.”
Anyway, this weekend I was looking at some of the bats with my son and I noticed something that I’d never paid attention to before. One of the Jackie Robinson H&B bats has an unusual notation near his name. The word “genuine” is above his name and the word “Purdue” is under his name. We grew up in Indiana, near Purdue University, and I can't believe I spent thousands of hours in my childhood playing with these bats and I never noticed this. This is the only bat I have that says this. I called my brother and he checked his Jackie Robinson bats – and all his other bats – and they do not have the “Purdue” designation.
Obviously, Jackie never played or coached at Purdue, so I’m wondering why this stamp/engraving would have been applied. It appears to have been done at a store or by the manufacturer (Louisville Slugger).
Does anyone else have any 1950s-60s bats with unusual stamps on them? Or know how mine might have come to have this? It probably doesn’t matter, but this particular model is the R17 style (engraved on the knob).
Thanks,
Brad
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08-26-2013, 01:21 PM
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