Episode 464 - Williams Deluxe Official Baseball Pitching Unit

For Amusement Only EM and Bingo Pinball Podcast·podcast_episode·13m 33s·analyzed·Feb 10, 2020

Analysis

claude-haiku-4-5-20251001 · $0.020

TL;DR

Nick Baldridge repairs seized Williams Deluxe Official Baseball pitching motor; explains complex mechanism design.

Summary

Nick Baldridge discusses his service work on a Williams Deluxe Official Baseball machine, focusing on diagnosing and repairing a seized pitching motor unit that had accumulated hardened grease. He details the complex mechanical design of the pitching mechanism, including the piston-driven ball delivery system, and provides troubleshooting and reassembly guidance for technicians. He also highlights unique gameplay features like lighted playfield sections and the score-to-beat mechanic, contrasting this older baseball game with later pitch-and-bat designs.

Key Claims

The pitching motor unit seized due to accumulated hardened grease, not motor failure, despite owner initially suspecting motor burnout
high confidence · Nick Baldridge describing diagnostic process and findings: 'every piece that could conceivably be slathered in grease was slathered in grease and the grease had solidified hardened and become immobile'
The pitching unit uses a piston-driven mechanism where a ball rolls from a trough onto a piston that pushes it up through the umpire figure into the pitcher's cup
high confidence · Nick Baldridge describing the mechanical design: 'The piston draws up and down, and a ball rolls from a trough, which is mounted underneath, onto the piston. Piston pushes it up, and it plops out of the umpire's stomach and into the cup'
Williams Deluxe Official Baseball lacks a strike unit, only tracks outs, which could be problematic for gameplay pacing at busy commercial locations compared to later baseball games with strikes
medium confidence · Nick Baldridge opinion on game design: 'This game is too early to have a strike unit. There's only outs... I think that missing aspect is problematic from a gameplay standpoint'
The pitching unit can be removed by unplugging a Jones plug and removing approximately 7 screws without major disassembly
high confidence · Nick Baldridge detailing removal procedure: 'The whole thing unplugs with the Jones plug... unscrew the pitching motor mount, which is about four screws... another three very small machine screws'
The pitching mechanism reassembly is complex with multiple arms that must be aligned in specific ways, and improper reassembly of the over-travel prevention arm causes the entire unit to bind
high confidence · Nick Baldridge warning about reassembly difficulty: 'If you get that wrong, then the whole thing binds up immediately, and there's no way to recover from that. You know, you have to disassemble the whole thing again'
The score-to-beat feature displays a set threshold (15-30 runs, operator-configurable) and awards multiple credits when exceeded; resets on next game start
high confidence · Nick Baldridge explaining scoring mechanic: 'those reels will start ticking up once a score exceeds that threshold and the player will be awarded with multiple credits once the next game is started'

Notable Quotes

“every piece that could conceivably be slathered in grease was slathered in grease and the grease had solidified hardened and become immobile”
Nick Baldridge @ ~2:30 — Describes the root cause of motor binding: not mechanical failure but accumulated, hardened grease preventing movement
“The ball actually comes up through the umpire's stomach and goes into the pitcher's extended metal cup which is then flung forward”
Nick Baldridge @ ~4:45 — Explains the unique piston-delivery mechanism that distinguishes Williams Deluxe Official Baseball from other baseball games
“If you get that wrong, then the whole thing binds up immediately, and there's no way to recover from that. You know, you have to disassemble the whole thing again.”
Nick Baldridge @ ~11:30 — Critical warning about reassembly of the over-travel prevention arm; emphasizes the need for photographic reference during disassembly
“I would heavily suggest taking a couple photographs as you're taking it apart, because it's layers on layers of mechanical pieces, and they all have to fit together in a particular way.”
Nick Baldridge @ ~11:00 — Practical troubleshooting guidance for technicians unfamiliar with this specific mechanism
“So it's not exactly a high score to date. It's the score to beat by the opportunity.”
Nick Baldridge @ ~14:15 — Clarifies the unique scoring mechanic of the score-to-beat feature, distinguishing it from standard high-score tracking
“I really like this game. It's a lot of fun to work on. It's the only one I've ever worked on, and I've never seen another one.”
Nick Baldridge @ ~15:00 — Expresses personal appreciation and indicates rarity of the Williams Deluxe Official Baseball machine

Entities

Nick BaldridgepersonWilliams Deluxe Official BaseballgameWilliamscompanyWorld Series (1937)gameFor Amusement Onlyorganization

Signals

?
product_concern: Williams Deluxe Official Baseball pitching motor seized due to grease accumulation; Nick speculates this may have been a reliability issue leading Williams to abandon the mechanism in later baseball games
medium · Nick notes: 'I don't know if Williams moved away from that mechanism because of reliability issues just like this' and discusses potential for motor burnout on commercial location if game not shut off in time
?
restoration_signal: Nick provides detailed disassembly, diagnosis, cleaning, and reassembly procedure for Williams Deluxe Official Baseball pitching unit, emphasizing photographic documentation during disassembly
high · Detailed walk-through of Jones plug removal, screw counts, E-clip locations, roll pin removal, and critical reassembly sequence
?
design_philosophy: Nick compares Williams Deluxe Official Baseball favorably to later pitch-and-bat games, noting this earlier game's lighted playfield sections and hole-based scoring create more dynamic gameplay than repetitive target-focused later designs
medium · Nick states: 'this is cool in that it's a wood rail, but also the scoring is based on holes in the play field, gobble holes instead of swinging targets... there's a little more similarity to the game of baseball'
?
design_philosophy: Nick identifies absence of strike unit in Williams Deluxe Official Baseball as a gameplay design gap; suggests adding strikes would improve realism and operational pacing for commercial venues
medium · Nick notes: 'This game is too early to have a strike unit. There's only outs... I think that missing aspect is problematic from a gameplay standpoint... would have decreased the amount of time that each player received'

Topics

Electromechanical pinball repair and maintenanceprimaryWilliams Deluxe Official Baseball machine design and featuresprimaryPitching motor mechanism diagnosis and repairprimaryBaseball-themed pinball gamesprimaryVintage pinball game mechanics and gameplaysecondaryPinball technician best practices and troubleshootingsecondary

Sentiment

neutral(0)

Transcript

groq_whisper · $0.041

What's that sound? It's 4 Amusement Only, the EM and Bingo Pinball Podcast. interest to me, so I'm dragging you all along for the ride. But until that time, I do have a few electromechanical topics to discuss, the first of which is Williams Deluxe Official Baseball. I was called out to the owner's house again recently. The game was working great when I left it, and then just a few weeks later, it stopped working. And the problem was the pitching motor was binding. The pitching motor was working perfectly fine when I was out there, so I was a little confused as to what might happen. The owner had already contacted somebody about getting a spare motor, but he sent me a couple photos and it didn't look burned or have any particular bad-looking areas or cooked areas, so I was skeptical that a new motor would actually fix it. I figured it was some kind of mechanical problem, and it turned out I was right. So I went out there, and the whole unit had been greased over time, and during my initial service, I didn't take that unit apart, because the switches on it were operating properly, and the game was moving and scoring as it should, so there was no reason to do so. however this time there was a reason and that's you know because things weren't operating properly so uh took it all apart and just every piece that could conceivably be slathered in grease was slathered in grease and the grease had solidified hardened and become immobile uh so i don't really have an explanation as to why it was working and then it all of a sudden wasn't, but I will say that once everything was cleaned off, sanded, polished, you know, and made to look sparkly new and lightly lubricated where necessary, the thing operated like brand new, and the motor was perfectly fine. The owner had shut the game off when the motor started binding, so it's not like it cooked itself. Everything, you know, worked okay. The only thing I was concerned about was possibly a tooth or two missing on a sacrificial gear for the motor, but no, everything was fine. So it's an unusual game, and I'm glad I had the opportunity to work on it. The pitching motor unit is a bit unique compared to the games that I've worked on. The ball actually comes up through the umpire's stomach and goes into the pitcher's extended metal cup which is then flung forward because on Williams Deluxe official baseball and official baseball there are players on the field that are molded And similar to one of my great favorites but well out of my price range the 1937 World Series, the Deluxe Official Baseball has these figures throughout the field, and they guard various holes. So there are holes in the playfield that enable scoring of runs and a home run as well. Now, hitting beneath the shortstops or the base fielders, any of those when not lit will give you an out. But if you hit one that is lit, it gives you a run. So it's pretty, a little nuance there. This game is too early to have a strike unit. There's only outs. So when you flub a pitch, you can do that as much as you want, which I feel like adding in the strikes not only added an element of realism to the game in that it made the scoring more accurate, but also it would have decreased the amount of time that each player received for their coin, which would be important if you had a busy location. So I think that missing aspect is problematic from a gameplay standpoint, but some of the cool things that it has are those lighted sections on the playfield that light up at random, and that is a really neat addition because it makes it so that the playfield is dynamic and you're shooting for different shots every time, unlike with most pigeon bats where you're basically, most of the later pigeon bats, I should say, where you're basically shooting either straight up the center or, you know, in one particular area. So back to this pitching unit and what makes it different, this pitching motor. So the motor is mounted on the side of this big unit. This unit has what's essentially a piston. The piston draws up and down, and a ball rolls from a trough, which is mounted underneath, onto the piston. Piston pushes it up, and it plops out of the umpire's stomach and into the cup of this pitcher's outstretched hand. This piston moves with several moving parts, so it's not just an arm that moves up and down. There are a couple of arms, one of which prevents over-travel, and the other of which is actually moving the piston up and down. So in order to disassemble this, the unit has to be removed. Williams made this very easy, actually. The whole thing unplugs with the Jones plug. This uses one of those flat pack Jones plugs, so you just undo that really quickly and unscrew the pitching motor mount, which is about four screws. You do have to remove the figure from the top of the play field and then that another three very small machine screws And then the whole unit just slides out the bottom and you can take it over to a bench and work on it. So this unit, the arm that actually moves the piston is attached with a roll pin, so you need a pin punch to knock that out. Set that aside. There are several E-clips that hold these different arms on, And each of those, I promise you, were just so completely covered in grease, it was astounding. I don't know what the deal was. The initial issue, I believe, was binding on the arm that prevents over-travel. and so a ball was able to get in to the chamber in an area where it wasn't supposed to be so there was nowhere for the piston to move and it felt like the whole thing was locked in place rigidly but really what the deal was when wound backwards was there was a ball in there so having a clean and free mechanism really makes a big difference in the usefulness of that scenario. Now, that said, I don't know if Williams moved away from that mechanism because of reliability issues just like this. If it happened to this one home use kind of person, that's not to say that it couldn't happen to anybody who's operating this game commercially, which would be a big problem. So, you know, if you're burning through motors, that's not a good thing. And that's what would happen on location. You know, somebody would just walk away from it and maybe tell somebody. But the game wouldn't be shut off until it was probably, you know, cooked. So, anyway, once it's all cleaned, reassembling it is a bit of a puzzle because there are multiple pieces which can only go on one way. but figuring out what that way is without photographic reference is actually a bit more difficult than one might imagine. So normally I don't take a lot of photographic reference, and I was able to get this thing back together pretty quickly, but if it's your first time taking one of these things apart, I would heavily suggest taking a couple photographs as you're taking it apart, because it's layers on layers of mechanical pieces, and they all have to fit together in a particular way. And the way that it's almost like an escapement arm, the one that prevents over-travel, is assembled. If you get that wrong, then the whole thing binds up immediately, and there's no way to recover from that. You know, you have to disassemble the whole thing again. So, knowing which way that arm goes on is crucial, and the order with which those arms are placed. Now it almost self because the one arm with the piston on it can only go in one spot But just how that mounts to the rotating mechanism is a bit different than you might expect There are arms that come off of the rotating portion that hit those. They either hook them or they hit them in particular spots. This is very hard to describe, but needless to say, it was challenging to put together. So if you have one of those, definitely take some photos if you're taking it apart for the first time. Now, another neat feature of the Deluxe Official Baseball is the score to match. So there's a set of red score reels in the center. This is a two-player game, and it can be set for between one and three innings. but there are a set of red reels in the center which track the high score to date. So if you exceed that score threshold, which can be set by the operator, it's something like anywhere from, I want to say, 15 runs up to 30. I'm not looking at the paperwork right now. It might be lower. It might be 10 to 30. but at any rate you can set that scoring threshold just about anywhere you want and what happens is those reels will start ticking up once a score exceeds that threshold and the player will be awarded with multiple credits once the next game is started the reels will actually jump back down to the standard amount. So if the score to beat is, let's say, 15, and you manage to score 30 runs, well, the reels will display the new high score of 30 until the next game is started, then it'll jump back down to 15, which is pretty interesting. So it's not exactly a high score to date. It's the score to beat by the opportunity. Having spent most of my time on the 1970s pitch and bats, this is cool in that it's a wood rail, but also the scoring is based on holes in the play field, gobble holes instead of swinging targets. So there's a little more similarity to the game of baseball, just from the action that the ball takes on the play field. I really like this game. It's a lot of fun to work on. It's the only one I've ever worked on, and I've never seen another one. And yeah, just had a great time getting it working and then coming out and fixing that motor. The game should provide that owner with many years of trouble-free operation now. So wish them all the best. All right, well, that's all for tonight. Thank you very much for listening. My name again is Nicholas Baldridge. You can reach me at 4amusementonlypodcast at gmail.com, or you can call me on the bingos line. That's 724-BINGOS-1, 724-246-4671. You can listen to me on iTunes, Stitcher, Pocket Cast, VRSS, on Facebook, on Twitter, at bingopodcast. You can follow me on Instagram, also at bingopodcast, or you can listen to me on my website, which is 4amusementonly.libsyn.com. thank you very much for listening and I'll talk to you next time