Ballpark Classics is not a sudden inspiration, or a cheap toy. Its beauty is more than skin deep. It has been designed, engineered, and manufactured In the United States to exacting standards. It is the culmination of tens of thousands of hours of research, play time, and product development. But more than that, it is the story of a childhood dream come true.

A Real Field of Dreams
Doug, our founder, grew up a Cincinnati Reds fan in a small farming community in Ohio. His love of baseball was instilled at an early age by his mother who was fan of the “Big Red Machine." And about 10 years before the classic baseball book Shoeless Joe was written (adapted into the film Field of Dreams) Doug’s Dad decided he didn’t want a house built across the road, so he bought the land and cut down a section of the cornfield to make a baseball diamond for his son and his friends. No wonder Field of Dreams is Doug's favorite movie.

County Fair Inspiration
Every summer during the first week of August, the Auglaize County fairgrounds came alive with rides, midway games, and the penny arcade. The penny arcade was a canvas tent about the size of a basketball court with a cage in the center inhabited by a shifty-looking character with a huge ring of keys. The arcade had a thick sawdust floor and was packed with all kinds of games. There was a fortune telling machine, a passion meter, and row after row of pinball machines. Asteroids, Space Invaders, and Pac Man were still more than a decade away. The perennial favorite was a baseball game called “Major League” A big steel ball emerged from under a metal flap and you smacked it with a flipper. This game devoured allowances and paper route proceeds at an alarming rate. Saddened when the Fair packed up and headed out of town, the idea for Ballpark Classics was born.

A Game of Our Own
So in 1977 at the age of 15, Doug set out to create his own game. Here's a photo of Doug from that time period on a Pony League All-Star team. That's him--bottom row, second from the left--sporting the bell bottom jeans. Taking a square piece of plywood and hammering four two-by-four feet to each corner, he nailed two thin outfield walls about six inches high to two sides of the game. At the other end of the diamond, he drove a nail through the center of a six-inch stick of hardwood, through a washer, and onto the field of play. He cut a wrapping paper tube down to size, and laid it in the crotch of the outfield walls, sloping down to field level, just behind second base. A few magic markers later, it roughly resembled a baseball field. He then cut three rectangular holes in both fences and wrote Single, Double, and Triple above the them. Marbles served as baseballs for the new game.

1989 Edition
Doug got busy growing up, and the original games fell into disrepair. It wasn't until over 20 years later, and now living in Southern California, that Doug decided to revive the concept of that game and build a more sophisticated version for his newborn son. He made several upgrades and enhancements that improved the mechanics of the game. This game, while intended for his son, was played relentlessly by friends and would need to be rebuilt.

Pitching Enhancements
Pipe replaced paper, and felt was added to simulate the infield and outfield turf. Doug affixed magnets to the backstop behind home plate to catch steel balls, now used in place of marbles. The slippery surface inside the pipe, the felt field, and the steel balls combined in a unique way to give the pitcher influence over the speed and path of the baseball as it neared home plate. By varying the placement of the baseball in the pitching pipe, adding a little spin to the release, and using assorted finger placements and pressures, pitchers were now able to throw a wide variety of pitches. Competition flourished. Pitching became the most interesting and enjoyable part of playing the game, and players rarely shared their secret pitches. With practice, letting the ball slide off the side of your finger or thumb made the ball bite into the felt about half way through the infield, resulting in an arc that was impressive to watch, and impossible to hit, as the fixed-width bat didn't extend beyond the outside edge of the plate. Changeups, appearing to be fastballs, would catch up with their backspin inches before the plate, then roll slowly through the heart of the plate long after the batter’s swing.

Batting Upgraded
The batting mechanism was the biggest engineering innovation from the original. Re-creating a baseball-like swing in a purely mechanical way proved elusive for a while. Once solved, it became one of the real innovations of the game, and also afforded the ability to play the game by yourself. If you had no one to play against, you could both pitch and bat from the pitching side of the game by working the bat with one hand while pitching with the other.

1999 Games
In 1993, Doug was transferred to Seattle and in early 1999, nine years after completing the second game, he built a replica of Boston’s Fenway Park. Our early games were hand constructed over many hours, and then played, repaired, improved upon, and played again. Many more prototypes and thousands of hours of play time and testing later, we know today’s games are ready for your next home stand.  Here is a picture of the handmade Fenway Park game.

Today's Games
After filing our US patent application, but before our license agreement with Major League Baseball, we professionally manufactured and sold a slightly larger version of Ballpark Classics that made its debut at FAO Schwarz in 2008. This game has been discontinued, but parts are still available.

Our new MLB Edition product line continues the tradition of innovation, providing a smaller footprint, higher quality, and a lower price, without compromise. Ballpark Classics is truly a childhood dream come true, and we want to share it with you. We know it will become a favorite game and your very own Field of Dreams. That’s why we say, “Our Fields. Your Dreams.”  Play Ball!