The Pecan Park Eagle

During the summer of 1950, this little pin ball baseball game was my “heat of the day” companion during the 12 noon to 3 pm time that we were all forced inside from the so-called polio vulnerable period of Houston’s worst heat, and probably with good reason prior to the polio vaccine of 1957. In the summer of 1950 alone, over 500 Houston kids came down with polio from mild to fatal effect.

POOSH M UP, JR. had 4 games you could play on the same field, but baseball was the only one that held my interest from the start. My actual copy of the game was discarded by my dad years ago. He would do that with our things once we seemed to have “outgrown” them. ~ Sometime in the late 1980s, My brother John found this replica of my original game from our Pecan Park Eagle days and gifted it to me. For one evening, at least, I reacted like an addict who had not snorted a line of cocaine for several decades. Then I found a place for it on my wall of memories and have since settled thereafter for its now-quiet presence as a fond reminder of a very happy early time in my life.

Under the lower left side, the part that’s covered by the glove in the first photo, there is a lever you pull that propels the little pin balls, one at a time, up the release channel and onto the field. Pulled at full strength, the ball shoots fast on an arc around the top and then bounces off a metal piece that is designed to carry it bouncing all over the place. ~ Over time, you learn what it takes to reach that tiny space between the two large “U” spaces above that are marked here as “single” and “walk”. Get into the narrow slot between these and it counts as a “home run.” I did reach a point as a kid with my perseverating play time with the game in which back-to-backs were not uncommon. No brag. Any kid with finger dexterity and my capacity for obsession could also do it.