Ball Park

Ball Park, manufactured by Chicago Coin Machine Manufacturing Company in June 1937, is an early baseball-themed coin-op with a confirmed production run of just 130 units. It belongs to a category common in the 1930s: a flipperless, one-ball payout machine, in which the player shot a single ball per play and could receive an automatic payout depending on where it landed. Games like this occupied the boundary between amusement and gambling that defined much of the pre-flipper era.

The playfield is populated with 21 spring bumpers, the dominant scoring device of the late 1930s, giving each shot a lively, unpredictable path. The machine was also equipped with an Electropak, a self-contained power unit that freed operators from maintaining dry-cell batteries - a practical innovation of the period.

With its baseball theme, tiny production run, and payout mechanism, Ball Park is an enigmatic yet fascinating piece of pinball prehistory, illustrating how the sport's appeal was harnessed by game makers well before the invention of the flipper.