Sport Ball

Sport Ball, produced by E. Hood and Company of Great Falls, Montana, is a pure mechanical (PM) pinball machine and a clone of the well-known 'Whiffle' game design. Its exact year of production is not documented, but as a whiffle-style clone it fits within the wave of bagatelle and pin games that proliferated in the early-to-mid 20th century, well before the invention of the flipper in 1947.

The machine offered 10 balls for 5 cents, reflecting the pricing conventions of early coin-operated pin games. Like other whiffle-style machines, gameplay would have relied on pins, targets, and gravity rather than any player-controlled flippers, challenging players to time and aim their shots purely through the ball's launch and the fixed layout of the playfield.

Little further documentation exists about Sport Ball's specific theme or artwork, but as a regional variant of the popular Whiffle design, it offers insight into how smaller manufacturers like E. Hood and Company adapted established pin-game formats for their own local markets.