Description: Major League, Pacific Amusement Co. (PamCo), 10/34, electro-mechanical ball pitcher. One of the first games with a ball kicking solenoid. Designed by Harry Williams. The object is to get a ball into the "batter up" hole. This fires a ball to home plate from the pitcher. Next put a ball into one of the animation scoring holes to move the batter-up ball into scoring position. The game is over when all balls are either in an outfield score hole or "out" position. There are ten 7/8" glass balls used in the game. Battery operated Electro mechanical pinball. The Pacific Amusement Major League was available in two sizes: 40"x20" (smaller), and 44"x22" (larger, which used standard sized pinball playfield glass of 43"x21".)

The Pacific Major League baseball pinball was released in three different versions. The first version had problems with the game inconsistently batting the ball. Hence games were pulled from locations and the playfield was redesigned as Major League Model 40. Later there was a Major League Model 44 with new advertising clearly pointing out that, "A new added feature: a batter automatically up every time."

The original first and second versions of Major League had a hole with a pair of crossed bats ("batter up"), where the player needed to shoot a ball first, as it kicked the ball to home plate from the pitcher VUK (vertical up kicker.) From there getting a single would advance the infield balls one base, and load a new ball at home plate from the pitcher VUK. Unfortunately hitting any of the other animation score holes (double, triple, homerun, sacrifice, stolen base) would advance the balls currently located on the infield accordingly, but would *not* put a new ball at home plate - only the Batter Up and Single playfield holes would load a new batter ball at home plate.

Because of this seemingly odd non-baseball play behavior, Pamco came up with a third version of the game. The last version no longer had the two crossed bat hole "batter up", as the game always put a ball at home plate. From a baseball point of view, this made a lot more sense, and it also made the game more fun (as there was always a ball on the infield, ready to advance if the player hit an animation score hole.) Also the lower ball arch changed (for the third time!) with a large cast metal "major league" emblem.

I have the larger 44"x22" second version of this game (with the crossed bats "batter up", and it uses ten glass balls size .950" diameter. Any larger and the balls get caught between the lower playfield ramp mechanism and the upper playfield infield mech. Smaller balls give inconsistent game play as they are kicked too hard.

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