Kro-Bat meaning
- Thread starter graycrait
- Start date
Henry Hub
Professional
This is driving me mad - I know I came across the answer to this question a few months ago but it’s escaping me now. I’m trying to remember if it is something to do with the Spalding golf line as they brought out the Kro-flite make of irons and balls in the 20s and 30s. Still doesn’t explain the “Kro” part though...
graycrait
Legend
@Henry Hub @vsbabolat
I am wondering if one of Spalding sporting goods key people had the last name of Kro. AG Spalding was dead in 1915 I think it was. The Kro-Flite golf products came out some time later as did the Kro-Bat rackets. But why the "Bat" in Kro-Bat? I have learned a lot today about the Spalding company of sports products but not anything about Kro or Kro-Bat.
I am wondering if one of Spalding sporting goods key people had the last name of Kro. AG Spalding was dead in 1915 I think it was. The Kro-Flite golf products came out some time later as did the Kro-Bat rackets. But why the "Bat" in Kro-Bat? I have learned a lot today about the Spalding company of sports products but not anything about Kro or Kro-Bat.
Sanglier
Professional
Kro-Flite golf ball ads from 1922 featured a flying crow, with the wording "As the 'Kro' Flies" below it. Evidently these balls had a patented vulcanized fiber cover that increased their toughness. As vulcanized fiber is black, it is quite possible that the Crow-Kro link in this instance is more than just homonymic.
'Bat' was a common synonym for 'racquet' during that era, judging by period literature. I don't think this usage has fully died out even today?
'Bat' was a common synonym for 'racquet' during that era, judging by period literature. I don't think this usage has fully died out even today?
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graycrait
Legend
@Sanglier , I buy into the marketing Kro-Flite for the clubs because "straight as a crow flies" is still something I hear from folks who I grew up with. I guess Kro-Flite became so big in sporting goods circles that the follow on products like a tennis "bat" being named Kro-Bat was a natural marketing progression. While Google searching there were a lot of Spalding tennis racket ads in college/university publications in the mid '50s, along with full page cigarette ads! I especially found this piece interesting: https://www.pophistorydig.com/topics/tag/tennis-and-tobacco/#:~:text=In 1934, American tennis star,among the world's best players.
Which came first Kro-Flite golf or Kro-Flight Kamp? http://whitemountainhistory.org/Cog_Railway_Photos_Pg_IQCV.html
Which came first Kro-Flite golf or Kro-Flight Kamp? http://whitemountainhistory.org/Cog_Railway_Photos_Pg_IQCV.html
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retrowagen
Hall of Fame
Those were marketed by Spalding around 40,000 years ago, mostly to Europeans. Kro-Magnanimous!
Hahahaha
Hahahaha
MAX PLY
Hall of Fame
You can google "Kro-Flite tennis" and find pictures of racquets with the name Kro-Flite and a picture of a crow on the throat of some models. Also, lots of Kro-Bats (but no weird Crow-Bat Creature--which would be cool). As for cigarettes--there's a long history of its association with sports (heck, you can see old video of baseball players smoking in the dugout and football players smoking on the sidelines). Lest us not forget the Virginia Slims!
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retrowagen
Hall of Fame
I hope I’m not patronizing in this reply, but of course the term, “bat,” as in baseball bat, has also applied to tennis racquets in the colloquial.
Seems like the “Kro” component was a Spalding trademark, shared with their golf products of the 1920’s through 1950’s. I’d wager if they had persisted with this into the “widebody” era of the late 1980’s, competing against the Prince Thunderstick and Wilson Sledgehammer, we’d have seen the Spalding Kro-Bar! But instead, we got the Spalding Taxi.
Seems like the “Kro” component was a Spalding trademark, shared with their golf products of the 1920’s through 1950’s. I’d wager if they had persisted with this into the “widebody” era of the late 1980’s, competing against the Prince Thunderstick and Wilson Sledgehammer, we’d have seen the Spalding Kro-Bar! But instead, we got the Spalding Taxi.
coachrick
Hall of Fame
They should have introduced one called the FU-bar !!! Would have been a smashing success!!!
Regarding the Taxi, it was too bad the name "Ugly Stick" had been trademarked
coachrick
Hall of Fame
I played the early Taxi...not a bad stick. The elastothane(?) string strips were interesting as it was a solid hitting stick. Dressed it "up" with hybrid red/blue HEAD Redline 17ga and various Gripsy print overgrips. No one could pick up my rackets by mistake!!!
WYK
Hall of Fame
To this day, in Ireland and the UK, I occasionally hear people(notably older generations, but not always) refer to a tennis racquet as a bat. Specifically, I was asked not long ago to 'bring your bat here to me' for someone to inspect. I'm an American, and so am very used to bat having only one meaning aside from the mammal. Here, it applies to about anything with which you can beat a person - small stick is a bat, racquet is a bat, golf club is a bat, branch is a bat, tire iron is a bat(iron bat, usually - which was my nickname in high school), fly swatter is a bat, back scratcher is a bat, a club is a bat(except when it is a cudgel - which appears to get it's meaning mostly for emphasis, especially with regards to tennis - 'I was cudgeled'), baton is a bat(which, presumably is the etymology) etc etc.
My wife refers to our electric fly swatter as an 'electric bat'. It literally was made to look like a tennis racquet(which is why she bought it for me).
I once held up what I thought was a stick about 1 metre in length and sarcastically asked someone if it was a 'bat' and was told, 'Don't be silly. That's obviously a stave'.
I was then informed by another that if I walked using it, it became a 'stick'. If I carried it, it was a 'stave'. If I hit someone with it, it became a 'bat'.
Yet another told me they were all wrong. It's a Shillelagh.
Hope that clears it all up for you.
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retrowagen
Hall of Fame
Sanglier
Professional
This may have been the last US-made racquet unambiguously calling itself a "bat", very briefly produced in San Diego circa 1970. The "poly" here stood for polyester, used in resin form to hold together the glass fibers; which several early composite racquet makers tried out before everyone settled on epoxy.
vsbabolat
G.O.A.T.
When did Spalding buy Snauwaert and shift production to the Snauwaert factory in Belgium?This may have been the last US-made racquet unambiguously calling itself a "bat", very briefly produced in San Diego circa 1970. The "poly" here stood for polyester, used in resin form to hold together the glass fibers; which several early composite racquet makers tried out before everyone settled on epoxy.
Sanglier
Professional
Spalding had been Snauwaert's largest OEM customer since at least the '60s, but according to Michel Guilluy, it did not acquire a financial stake in the latter until 1973, at the insistence of Karel Snauwaert himself, who was looking for a way to accommodate Spalding's request for a significant expansion in production capacity without having to shoulder all the investment risks himself. His hedging proved to be more than justified, as global demand for wooden racquets would collapse not too many years after the poorly-timed production expansion was completed.
Henry Hub
Professional
Re “bats” as a colloquialism, J. Parmly Paret suggested in 1904 (“Lawn Tennis - Its Past, Present, and Future” - the Oxford comma gives me palpitations) that this name was used for the earliest lawn tennis rackets to differentiate them (though similar in shape) from real tennis/jeu de paume rackets. Extract below (with some fun pictures of racket evolution as a bonus):
