Backyard Baseball

Backyard Baseball is a series of baseball video games for children which was originally developed by Humongous Entertainment. It was first released in October 1997 for Macintosh and Microsoft Windows. Later games were featured on Game Boy Advance, PlayStation 2, GameCube, Wii, and iOS. It is part of the Backyard Sports series, of which this series serves as its first sub-series.

Backyard Baseball
The logo of Backyard Baseball '97 (2024), a remaster of the original Backyard Baseball (1997)
Genre(s)	Sports
Developer(s)	Humongous Entertainment Mega Cat Studios
Publisher(s)	Humongous Entertainment Infogrames/Atari The Evergreen Group Playground Productions
Platform(s)	Nintendo DS, PlayStation 2, Wii, Windows, iOS, Xbox 360, Game Boy Advance, GameCube, Macintosh
First release	Backyard Baseball October 10, 1997
Latest release	Backyard Baseball '97 October 10, 2024

The original game consisted of 30 neighborhood kids from which the player must build a team.^[1] Over the years, the idea of "Pro players as kids" became popular, and the original statistics and looks of the players changed. As the game progresses, there are some professionals that become available or "unlockable" including Randy Johnson, Derek Jeter, and Mike Piazza.

In Backyard Baseball, players take a managerial role by creating a team of different players to compete against opponents. In the different installments, one could choose to play a one-off exhibition game or a seasonal league, followed by the "Backyard Baseball League" playoffs, which contains the American League and National League division series,^[a] the AL and NL championship series^[b] and finally the "Backyard Baseball World Series".^[c] Series games will vary per game.

This game has various playable modes, and they include: Single Game, Batting Practice, Spectator, and Season Game.

A remastered version of the first Backyard Baseball title was released on October 10, 2024,^[2] with a remastered version of Backyard Baseball 2001 planned to release on a later date.^[3]

Legacy

Pablo Sanchez, one of the fictional playable characters in the game, has been regarded as one of the strongest athletes in video game history.^[4][5][6]

The game has also been noted for its diversity (gender, race, disability, etc.) of characters, both in ratio of white to non-white and male to female, as well as skill level and the distribution of the best characters.^[7]

Players

In Backyard Baseball 2001, in addition to the 30 fictional kids, each team was represented by at least one MLB pro player,^[d] many of which were all-stars during the 1999 Major League Baseball All Star Game. Eventual Hall of Fame players featured include Barry Larkin, Vladimir Guerrero, Jeff Bagwell, Larry Walker, Chipper Jones, Derek Jeter, Mike Piazza, Tony Gwynn, Ken Griffey Jr., Cal Ripken Jr., Ivan Rodriguez, and Randy Johnson, who are all playable characters to choose from.

Other professional players from the later games included Chipper Jones, Frank Thomas, Alex Rodriguez, Alfonso Soriano, Ichiro Suzuki, Sammy Sosa, Jim Thome, Albert Pujols, Nomar Garciaparra, Ken Griffey Jr., and Barry Bonds.

Several of these players would be featured in multiple releases including Nomar Garciaparra, Derek Jeter, and Alex Rodriguez.

Installments

Release timeline

1997	Backyard Baseball
1998–1999
2000	Backyard Baseball 2001
2001
2002	Backyard Baseball (GBA)
	Backyard Baseball 2003
2003	Backyard Baseball (GCN)
2004	Backyard Baseball (PS2)
	Backyard Baseball 2005 (PC)
2005	Backyard Baseball 2006 (GBA)
2006	Backyard Sports: Baseball 2007
2007
2008	Backyard Baseball 09
2009	Backyard Baseball 10
2010	Backyard Sports: Sandlot Sluggers
2011–2014
2015	Backyard Sports: Baseball 2015 (Mobile)
2016–2023
2024	Backyard Baseball '97 (PC)
TBA	Backyard Baseball '01 (PC)

Title	Year	Platforms	Cover athlete
Backyard Baseball	October 10, 1997[8]	Macintosh, Windows	Original characters
Backyard Baseball 2001	June 6, 2000[9]		Cal Ripken Jr.
Backyard Baseball	2002	Game Boy Advance	Mike Piazza
Backyard Baseball 2003	2002	Macintosh, Windows
Backyard Baseball	2003	GameCube	Alex Rodriguez
Backyard Baseball	2004	PlayStation 2
Backyard Baseball 2005	2004	Windows
Backyard Baseball 2006	2005	Game Boy Advance
Backyard Sports: Baseball 2007	2006	Game Boy Advance, GameCube, PlayStation 2, Windows	Albert Pujols
Backyard Baseball 09	2008	Nintendo DS, Wii, PlayStation 2, Windows	David Ortiz
Backyard Baseball 10	2009	Nintendo DS, Wii, PlayStation 2
Backyard Sports: Sandlot Sluggers	2010	Wii, Nintendo DS, Xbox 360, Windows	Original characters
Backyard Sports: Baseball 2015	2015	iOS, Android
Backyard Baseball '97	October 10, 2024[10]	Windows
Backyard Baseball '01	TBA