Wiffle Ball enters National Toy Hall of Fame as classic toy

Wiffle Ball was inducted into the National Toy Hall of Fame on Nov. 9, 2017, taking its place alongside Clue and the paper airplane in a class chosen from 12 finalists. The hall, established in 1998, honors toys that inspire creative play and sustain popularity over time. At the time of its induction, it joined 64 other classic toys and games in the hall.

The game began in Fairfield, Connecticut, in 1952 and 1953, when David N. Mullany, a retired semi-pro pitcher, watched his 12-year-old son, David A. Mullany, and a friend improvise with a perforated plastic golf ball and a broomstick. Mullany kept testing designs, including ball-shaped plastic containers from a nearby Coty cosmetics manufacturer, until he found the version that worked best: eight oblong slots cut into one hemisphere. That shape made the ball dart, dive and tail in ways that let pitchers throw curveballs, sliders and knuckleballs while shrinking the space needed to play.

Mullany sold the first balls in 1953, removing the h from whiff to trademark the name and charging 49 cents apiece from the back of a station wagon and at a local diner. He expanded in 1954 with a New York marketing agent, a Canal Street presence in Lower Manhattan and a Woolworth deal. By 1959, the Mullanys were running their own factory in Shelton, Connecticut, and the brand had already settled into the routines of neighborhood baseball, where a thin bat, a light ball and a patch of open space could turn a driveway or yard into a field.

Wiffle Ball, Inc. has since produced millions of balls and set official rules and field dimensions. During the 1990-1991 Persian Gulf War, soldiers listed it among their most wanted items. In the 1960s, the company reinforced the product’s baseball credentials with a black-and-white television advertisement featuring Whitey Ford demonstrating how to throw a curve.