Major League (Model 40)

The Major League (Model 40), manufactured by the Pacific Amusement Manufacturing Company (PAMCO) in October 1934, is an early electro-mechanical, single-player, baseball-themed pin game designed by Bon MacDougall and C. Hale. As a pre-flipper game from the earliest years of coin-operated pinball, it relies on a plunger and playfield holes rather than any flipper mechanism -- flippers would not appear in pinball for more than another decade.

The game was advertised at 40 inches by 20 inches, with a nameplate on the lower playfield apron reading "Model No 40." It was a slightly shorter companion to PAMCO's Model 44, and both were improvements on PAMCO's original 1934 Major League, correcting a mechanical defect and adding a feature advertised as "a batter automatically up every time." The Model 40 can be distinguished from Model 44 by its playfield: it has a single hole at the top rather than two, a deeper chevron arrangement of holes below it, and painted-on (rather than raised) bats over the Batter Up hole.

Designer Bon MacDougall's patent application for the game was split by the Patent Office into three separate filings, granted between September 1934 and March 1936. By the time this game was produced, PAMCO's earlier designer Harry Williams had already left the company, and manufacturer advertising indicates the Model 40 was produced at both the Los Angeles and Chicago locations.