I was trolling/searching on RGP for some information and a Clay response and statement I thought might be interesting to some of our baseball game owners.

FYI, The last Williams baseball game with a metal bat with the black rubber sleeve was the 1959 Pinch Hitter. The first Williams game with a plastic bat was 1960 Official Baseball Deluxe.

Clay pointed this out in 2006 and it makes so much sense;
I gotta check my balls now.

"Pinch Hitter should have a metal bat.
The reason is simple - it's the last williams EM
pitch and bat that uses 7/8" balls. Starting with
Official baseball in 1960, Williams changed to
the smaller 3/4" ball. With this change they also
used the plastic nylon bat.

If you use 7/8" balls in the pinch hitter with
a plastic bat, you'll destroy the bat. it just can't
handle the weight and size of the 7/8" balls."

I have 7/8" in my World Series and think I got 2 more similar size sets from PBR for the two 63 ML games being restored ...scared to look in the box.

I also broke some bats last year...figures.

What do they say 'experience is somthing you get just after you need it'.

I followed Clay's advice and got the smaller 3/4" balls and added to my two recent 1963 Major League restore projects. Results were not so good. This game had the first target unit and was used in some variation on all EM Williams games through 1973.

Problem is the targets don't always go down if the shoot is not perfectly struck (happens a lot) and can get momentarily stuck between two targets. The 7/8" big balls however works much better. The pitching unit on the 63 Major league was the last year of the E-5613 version that was designed for the 'big' balls. The year after the pitching unit was changed to a D-6322 unit and I have zero experience with and will not comment except dimension wise it seems to to be adequate for a big ball.

My advice is to have a few Slugfest bats spare (robust bat) and use the 7/8" big balls on all games with plastic bats through 1963 Major League games for sure. I believe the new games should work just fine also but have not tried it, possibly others can comment

These games had there parts interchanged to keep them running. It is rare to find a game from the 50's and 60's that have all original parts as they were so popular. The game originally had a 5161-1 batting unit and had a metal bat. To this point I made a set of charts so we could figure out the correct parts to fix the games. See link
https://pinside.com/pinball/forum/topic/williams-baseball-game-motor-coils-and-bat-assembly-information#post-2926843

Your point is well taken that they work fine using 'big' balls and can last a long time with plastic bats. A wooden bat sounds interesting have you a picture?.

The plastic bats do break occasionally so have spares when we use our big balls on these games.