Pinball Adventures - Volume 3

By Andrew MacBain

Sport themed pinball machines from 1975 to present. Pinball Adventures has done it again! Meet Former Heavyweight boxing champ Ernie Shavers known as the greatest one punch knockout artist in box

• Language: English
• Publisher: Pinball Adventures
• Release date: Nov 12, 2020
• ISBN: 9781999422660

Book preview

Published by Pinball Adventures

Editors

Andrew MacBain

Veronica MacBain

Authors

Andrew MacBain

Marketing Support

Sasha MacBain

Photography

Sasha MacBain

Pinball Community

Graphic Design

Veronica MacBain

We would like to thank the many people within the Pinball Community, Friends, family and all others that have helped make this book possible. Without the generous contributions of stories, information, images and personal experiences, we could not have done this.

If you find we have missed anything, any errors, infringements, or other issues, please contact Pinball Adventures through our website at www.pinballbuzz.com.

Copyright © 2020 Pinball Adventures

ISBN: 978-1-9994226-6-0 (e-book)

All rights reserved.

Printed in the United States of America

DO YOU KNOW WHAT IS ...

Passive Bumper?

A bumper which does not kick the ball when hit, although it may register a score or play a sound effect. Also known as a dead bumper.

Banana Flippers?

Curved flipper bats found on Williams’ Disco Fever and Time Warp games, shaped much like a banana.

Drop Target?

An upright, pressure-sensitive rectangle that drops below the playfield when hit by the ball. Drop targets are often arranged in so-called banks, and may require being hit in combination or in sequence to score or light special features.

Source: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Glossary_of_pinball_terms#

Baseball

Basketball

Bowling

Boxing

Black & White

Car Racing

Football

Collector Corner

Golf

Hockey

High Rollers

Designers and Artists

Billiards

Soccer

Wrestling

Other Sports

I have always loved the baseball pinball. I can remember my days at the local arcade paying a quarter to wait for the mini ball to pop up through the center of a playfield and have me hit the large metal button to have the large bat swing. I would hold my breath hoping that the ball would go straight up the middle and hit the home run target. Yes, an older version of Grand slam with an indescribable large metal button. Play ball with me as I take you back to where it all started.

You may have heard that a young man named Abner Doubleday invented the game known as baseball in Cooperstown, New York, during the summer of 1839. Doubleday then became a Civil War hero, while baseball became America’s beloved national pastime.

That story is not only untrue, it’s not even in the ballpark.

Doubleday was still at West Point in 1839, and he never claimed to have anything to do with baseball. In 1907, a special commission created by the sporting goods magnate and former major league player A.J. Spalding used flimsy evidence—namely the claims of one man, mining engineer Abner Graves—to come up with the Doubleday origin story. Cooperstown businessmen and major league officials would rely on the myth’s enduring power in the 1930s, when they established the National Baseball Hall of Fame and Museum in the village.

But the real history of baseball is a little more complicated than the Doubleday legend. References to games resembling baseball in the United States date to the 18th century. Its most direct ancestors appear to be two English games: rounder’s (a children’s game brought to New England by the earliest colonists) and cricket.

By the time of the American Revolution, variations of such games were being played on schoolyards and college campuses across the country. They became even more popular in newly industrialized cities where men sought work in the mid-19th century.

In September 1845, a group of New York City men founded the New York Knickerbocker Baseball Club. One of them—volunteer firefighter and bank clerk Alexander Joy Cartwright—would codify a new set of rules that would support modern baseball, calling for a diamond-shaped infield, foul lines and the three-strike rule. He also abolished the dangerous practice of tagging runners by throwing balls at them.

Cartwright’s changes made the burgeoning pastime faster-paced and more challenging while clearly differentiating it from older games like cricket. In 1846, the Knickerbockers played the first official game of baseball against a team of cricket players, beginning a new, uniquely American tradition.

A grand slam occurs when a batter hits a home run with men on first base, second base and third base. Four runs score on a grand slam -- the most possible on one play -- and a batter is awarded four RBIs.

Understandably, a grand slam usually has an immense impact on the result of the game, because four runs score on the play. It’s relatively rare to see a team win after allowing a grand slam. When a team trails by four runs or fewer, announcers will often say the team is within slam range because it could tie the game or take the lead with a grand slam.

Grand slams are rare. They are also entirely a result of the circumstances, meaning some of the game’s greatest sluggers haven’t hit many grand slams simply because the situation (three men on base) rarely presents itself.

The term originated in the card game Bridge, referring to a player winning every trick. It carried over into baseball because it calls a team scoring many runs as possible in one at-bat.

With today being the opening day of the 2011 baseball season, we’ve been thinking about all the things that to look forward to from now until the World Series. Namely lots of warm beer and ballpark food.

Sure lots of stadiums are going progressively more haute with their cuisine from the Dungeness crab cakes at AT&T Park in San Francisco to the slow-cooked pork tacos with tomatillo-chipotle salsa at Citi Field in NYC, but we also have a nostalgic hunger for the traditional foods of summer.

In his book Baseball is America: Origins and History: The Good, the Bad, and the Ugly, Victor Baltov and his son argue that baseball serves as a metaphor for America’s historical trajectory. Baseball food—hot dogs, peanuts and Cracker Jack, and cotton candy—is an essential part of the baseball experience. And we agree.

Hot dogs got their name in 1901 at the Polo Grounds. Tad Dorgan, a cartoonist for New York Journal, wrote Hot dog! to describe vendor cries of Get your dachshund sausages while they’re red hot! While that story is contested by some wiener historians and no copy of this famed cartoon has ever surfaced, I like the story. And am glad they are not walking around having to utter the phrase dachshund sausages.

Unlike hot dogs, peanuts and Cracker Jack connect to the world of baseball only tangentially. At the Chicago World’s Fair, Candied Popcorn and Peanuts preceded Cracker Jack. During the Dead Ball era, Cracker Jack proved a fan favorite, especially once Take Me Out to the Ballpark emerged in 1908. Similarly, cotton candy first appeared at the St. Louis World’s Fair in 1904. Associated with carnivals and midways, cotton candy now holds a special place in the hearts of many baseball enthusiasts.