It's a home run for the Wiffle Ball.
The plastic ball created in a Connecticut back yard in the 1950s was one of three items inducted into the Toy Hall of Fame at the Strong Museum of Play on Nov. 9.
Other inductees at the Rochester, N.Y., museum were the paper airplane and the board game Clue.
Items missing the cut were Pez candy dispensers, the Magic 8 Ball, Matchbox cars, My Little Pony, play food, the game Risk, sand, Transformers and the card game Uno.
The Wiffle Ball joins other plastic toy stalwarts as Lego, Rubik's Cube, Barbie and the Etch-A-Sketch.
David N. Mullaney invented the Wiffle Ball in the summer of 1953 when he watched his son and a friend playing a game with a plastic golf ball and a broomstick handle.
"They had given up on baseball and softball," the company website notes. "Not enough players for two teams, not enough space for a field, and too many broken windows.
"He picked up some ball-shaped plastic parts from a nearby factory, cut various designs into them and sent Dad out to test them," grandsons David J. and Stephen A. Mullaney say on the company site. "They both agreed that the ball with eight oblong perforations worked best. That's how the Wiffle perforated plastic ball was invented."