Greenville Touching the World one baseball bat at a time?

Zinn Beck

  Tonight I tried something that I honestly did not think would work but it did. I typed "textile mill baseball" into the search engine on Craiglist. I was really drawn to a post of a man who had a bat made by the Zinn Beck Bat Company, in Greenville!!! I thought wait a minute there has to be something behind this. The Zinn Beck Bat Company was founded by Zinn Beck. Beck played in the major leauges with the St. Louis Cardinals from 1913-1916 and with the New York Yankees in 1918.

Wouldn't ya know it very little is out there about his bat manufacturing career in Greenville. He was a bat manufacture during the 1920's and produced high quality pro model bats. These pro model bats were made to the exact specifications of pro players. Players like Ty Cobb, Roger Hornsby and Lou Gehrig, some of the greats of the game.  One of the Ty Cobb Diamond Ace Model(which is what all the pro bats were called, distinquished by a number such as 36 for Gehrig or 300 for Cobb) went for $8,124 dollars in a auction!!!

Ty Cobb, Zinn Beck bat

So you ask how does this tie into my research?  After reading what I could find about the Zinn Beck Company, I began to wonder if he tested this bats out with the local mill teams? I mean what better way to perfect a piece of lumber than to have to take a beating in a mill league ball game!!!

I have not found any proof of this yet but I will keep digging and maybe something might turn up.