Swingable Art: The Bat King Takes Over Mitchell & Ness’s Third Floor for All-Star Week
The Walnut Street flagship’s normally-closed third floor is hosting a residency from Victus’ “Bat King” through Tuesday, with history hanging on the walls.
It’s rare that sports, art, and neighborhood history share the same room, and rarer still that the room is one you’re not normally allowed into. But for a few days timed to MLB All-Star Week, that’s exactly what’s happening on the third floor of the Mitchell & Ness flagship at 1513 Walnut as the brand showcases the artistry of Bruce Tatem who’s better known as the Bat King.
Home Field Advantage
If you’ve walked into the Mitchell & Ness’s Walnut Street flagship you can see (and smell!) that it’s still very brand new. The company — founded in 1904 on Filbert Street by tennis champion Frank P. Mitchell and golfer Charles M. Ness — just opened this MUCH bigger home in late May in the former Brooks Brothers (RIP). The new flagship clocks in at 16,400 square feet across three floors. Two floors are dedicated to retail, and the third is an event and gathering space, reserved for VIPs and exclusive activations like this one.
All you have to do is walk up the stairs, past the framed Reggie White jersey (and other vintage finds lining the way), into a room that feels less like retail and more like a private clubhouse crossed with an art gallery: Chesterfield sofas, vintage team photos on easels, hardwood floors.
Batter Up: Meet the Bat King
The artist behind the residency is Bruce Tatem, better known as The Bat King, and if you’ve watched a single Phillies playoff game in the last five years, you’ve almost certainly seen his work. He’s been with Victus for five years, but he’s been airbrushing since he was 17, and before baseball bats, he was putting his art on motorcycles.
His bats are less “sporting goods” and more “commissioned pieces.” The list of players who treat a Tatem bat like a personal commission is a who’s-who — Bryce Harper, Julio Rodríguez (a frequent collaborator), plus nearly every player in this year’s Home Run Derby. Every single one is done by hand.
Then there’s the “Skools Out” collection, which, even if you don’t know Tatem’s name, you probably know by sight. Crayons. Sharpies. A Foul Pole Yellow. A No. 2 pencil, complete with pink eraser and metal ferrule. We hear that the pencil bat is the one that broke the internet, and since we’re sometimes too lazy to do research, we’ll take this fact at face value.
The origin story is almost too good because it was Tatem’s son who gave him the idea. From the podcast: “My son casually walks by and said, ‘you should make a bat that looks like a pencil,'” Tatem said. “And I was like alright, I’ll see what I can do.” That “I’ll see what I can do” ended up in the hands of MLB stars, including at the Little League Classic, where the pencil bat made its big-league debut alongside a Phanatic-themed bat for Harper (YOU KNOW WHICH ONE!)
Downstairs on the main floor, you can spin a rotating display of the more accessible Victus offerings: team-branded bats, Phanatic bats, character bats, a whole rainbow of the stuff. Not the one-of-one commissions, but a way to take a piece of the Bat King universe home with you!
And then — because someone on this team has a sense of humor — there’s the fireplace. Filled with broken, splintered, game-used bats. Kindling, but make it conceptual, thank you very much.
Hall of Fame Material
Tatem’s contemporary work isn’t hanging in a vacuum; it’s sharing walls with real, tangible baseball history. And nowhere is that clearer than the case holding Bryce Harper’s “Bedlam at the Bank” bat: Game 5 of the 2022 NLCS, pennant-clinching two-run home run off Robert Suárez, Citizens Bank Park erupting. Red October, forever. The bat itself — a Victus FT23 maple — is right there under glass with its MLB authentication plaque.
Next to that, Marucci’s “Honor The Game” collection lines a full wall with every MLB franchise, jersey-painted onto the barrel. Yankees/Ruth. Braves/Aaron. Phillies/Howard. Nationals/Zimmerman.
If you keep looking there’s a 1944 Stan Musial Cardinals jersey, a signed Cal Ripken Jr. Orioles jersey, and a mosaic of All-Star Game programs going back decades. Standing in the middle of this room, you really do feel like you’re standing between where the game has been, and where it’s headed. Via bat artistry, no less.
The Victus/Marucci partnership makes the whole thing possible because for the past 13 seasons, the company has been an official Major League Baseball bat supplier, and their King of Prussia operation is where all of this originates (Victus turns out more than 100,000 bats a year!)
Sharing the third floor with Bat King is companion artist Louis Wes, whose grid of framed illustrated player cards that are Philly-heavy, cartoon-forward, and extremely fun, occupy its own gallery wall, alongside Lil’ Louie figures, custom trading cards, and yes, a Brandon Marsh cheesesteak bat framed like a Renaissance portrait (because, of course.)
On Deck: Monday’s Derby Bat Unveiling & More
Good news: the frosted glass on the third floor comes down at 12:30 PM and the OFFICIAL Victus bats headed to Monday night’s 2026 Home Run Derby get unveiled in that same room; no RSVP, everyone’s welcome, drop in if you’re in the area.
Bruce’s residency wraps Tuesday, timed to the All-Star Game itself. That gives you a pretty time frame to see as it’s a go-this-week, stand-in-the-room kind of opportunity. But even if you don’t have a moment to see it, bask in the fact that this is just the beginning of what we can expect from a store that’s at the epicenter of sports in our neighborhood.
