Bambino

This 1930s baseball game, named after Babe Ruth, has a highly unusual gameplay mechanism. It may be the only boardgame where players actually hit a ball with a bat and see the outcome on the board.

The 2" diameter ball is mounted on the top of a foot-long stand ending in a spring fastened under the metal board. The foot-long wooden baseball bat is used to strike the ball, causing the ball stand to fall across the "umpire". This is a curved rubber barrier topped with 25 teeth and a string that runs horizontally through the teeth.

When the ball stand hits the umpire, it pushes into one of the 24 gaps, each of which is numbered. The gap it struck can be seen after the ball bounces back up because it kinks the string at that location. Each number is repeated along the outfield wall along with a result, from Ball or Strike to Home Run or Out.

Each team has a set of wooden peg players, and the play proceeds and is scored like a regular baseball game. There are dials on the board for recording balls, strikes, runs and outs during an inning, and paper scorecards for recording the results of each inning.

Later editions of this game did away with the umpire. Instead, the board had an outfield wall with three holes and a jagged top. The ball was on a string and if it went over the wall, each notch had an outcome like this first edition. In addition, players could score a home run or extra-base hit by getting the ball through one of the holes, but would be out if it hit the wall and bounced off.