It had a lightning symbol burned into it, and it was magic. Well, that is all kids feel about their Lousiville Slugger. Big Leaguers are even more obsessive. They become convinced that a given bat has a certain number of hits in it, that the wood is good or lousy, that wide grain or narrow is better. My father swung a hammer for a living, and he could feel very slight differences in the weight and balance of a hammer.
Professional ballplayers are like that with their bats.
Tony Gwynn uses a bat with a black barrel and a white, unvarnished handle. In the beginning J.F. Hillerich, the son of a German immigrant, opened a wood shop in Louisville in 1859. Pete had three hits the next day, and soon the whole team was using Hillerich bats. There are other versions of the story, but the essential truth is that the Hillerich company started making bats for the Lousiville team in the 1880's, and the bats spread throughout the major leagues. The old man was supposedly against the baseball bat business, but young Bud pushed hard for it.