Backyard Baseball is Exactly What Sports Fans Need Now

All sports are canceled now, and it looks like they won’t be coming back anytime soon. So what are we fans going to do in the meantime? Sit around the house and play sports video games of course! Most baseball fans have been playing MLB: The Show, which does a great job of simulating an actual Major league game. But today, I’d like to talk about something a little different: The early 2000s classic series, Backyard Baseball.

The original game consisted of 30 “kids.” All animated characters with a variety of unique characteristics and catchphrases. The players range from the speedy Pete Wheeler to the power hitting Kiesha Phillips, but everyone knows that the best player in the game is Pablo Sanchez. This kid can do it all. He hits for power, he can run, and he can field. Pretty much everyone who has played the game can agree that Pablo is the backyard’s elite.

In later versions, including the 2001 edition that I had as a kid, the game featured animated “kid” versions of actual MLB players. As a baseball fan, watching the players as young kids was both weird and beautiful at the same time. It’s absolutely hilarious watching animated Chipper Jones explain that his real name is Larry, “but don’t tell anyone, okay?” or listening to Canadian Hall of Famer Larry Walker talk about how he played baseball instead of hockey because he wanted to keep all of his teeth, “although having fake teeth would be pretty cool though.” Each team picks nine starters from the kids and players, and then the action begins.

Before the game starts, we are introduced to lead play-by-play announcer Sunny Day and color commentator Vinnie the Gooch. The sunglasses-wearing, corn dog-eating gooch has become a classic element of the game with his funny comments about the players. The game itself is very simple. When hitting, the player can choose between power, line drive, or grounder, and just click anywhere to swing. There are four types of pitches, heat, slowball, left hook, and right hook. That’s pretty much the complete extent of the gameplay, but it’s the intangible elements of the game that have made Backyard Baseball a classic. For example, spectators heckling the players with lines like “We want a batter! Not a broken ladder!” It’s so weird that it works perfectly.

The original series of PC games ended in 2005, but most of the games can still be played on modern hardware through emulation. If you’re a baseball fan, I’d definitely recommend giving the game a try. Its funny quirks and features are exactly the type of distraction that we need right now.