Bat-Em

The Bat-Em, manufactured by the In and Outdoor Games Company of Chicago, Illinois in April 1932, comes from the very first wave of commercial pinball, when countertop marble games were sweeping through drugstores, cigar shops, and taverns across America. It is a pure mechanical (PM) game - no electricity at all - built as a compact tabletop/counter game measuring just 24 inches long and 16 1/2 inches wide.

The economics were simple and typical of the Depression era: five balls for one cent. That penny-play model was central to pinball's explosive early growth, offering cheap entertainment when money was scarce, and Bat-Em's baseball theme tied it to a sport whose popularity was surging in 1930s America.

No designer is credited and little else is documented about this machine or its maker, a short-lived Chicago firm active only from 1931 to 1932. Even so, Bat-Em remains an evocative artifact of pinball's countertop origins, before the games grew legs, lights, and eventually flippers.