The Long Awaited Return of Backyard Baseball

The popular edutainment sports franchise is coming back, but it's trying to keep that same look, feel, and inclusive joy that made it a classic.

Backyard Sports was a popular edutainment franchise that started in 1997, though there hasn’t been a new entry since 2010. Fans have been waiting for a new Backyard about three years longer than the next Grand Theft Auto. (There was, technically, a mobile game back in 2015.) It’s perhaps best known for its cast of diverse and memorable characters, especially the first sports GOAT for many millennials, Pablo Sanchez.

The gameplay in the Backyard is much more arcade-focused than other sports games: less NBA 2K, more NBA Jam. As opposed to the simulation games that dominate the sports game market, Backyard Sports is more focused on fun—after all, it was originally “edutainment.” The focus was teaching the rules of baseball, rather than a challenge.

But after all these years, a new game didn’t come easy. It took a lot of work, including hiring a private investigator. But on July 9, Backyard Baseball will be released on Steam, and is coming to Switch, PlayStation 5, and Xbox Series X/S at a later date.

“What if you had the opportunity one day to work on your favorite franchise?”

It’s a question that Playground Productions’ Lindsay Barnett (CEO and voice behind four characters, including commentator Vinnie the Gooch) and Matthew Berk (CMO) posed to me during our recent interview. It’s one they get to answer every day, as the company bringing back Backyard Sports.

It’s hard to argue that any game beats Backyard Baseball in terms of inclusion. Kenny Kawaguchi, a boy in a wheelchair, is one of the best pitchers you could ask for. Keisha Phillips, a Black girl, is the best power hitter in the game. And the flagship character, Pablo Sanchez, doesn’t speak English. You would be hard-pressed to find a kid who picks up Backyard Baseball and doesn’t someone who looks like them or acts like them.

“How many other games do kids get to see the representation that they see in the backyard, right?” said Berk. “When they look at this game, they get to see themselves. And especially for those who [are having] their first gaming experience, they’re gonna look at these kids who will become backyard heroes, or legends, or whatever they become to them and know that they can do that too. It’s a wonderful place to start.”

As a teacher, Barnett saw firsthand the lack of fulfilling games for children available.

“I had to see for my entire teaching career, students that were getting taken advantage of by the games that they were playing,” she said. “They had to buy things in order to win them, or they were just exposed to violence and inappropriate themes much earlier. There’s a simplicity to the backyard of, you know, ‘you can play here.’”

“I was really struck by, when my nephew was picking players, he picked players with positive self-talk, and looked like they were excited to play. And you start to realize how important these characters and what they say can be to the development of a child.”

“It’s a time suck,” said Berk. “Ask a kid after two hours of playing if they’re happy, if they’re satisfied—if they feel good about it. I’d be hard pressed to find one who doesn’t walk away from playing Backyard and saying, ‘I loved it.’”

In an era where live service games are dominating, both in children’s and sports games, time is the valuable commodity. Keep playing to level up a battle pass. Complete the limited-time challenge today, or miss out on a skin of a cool character.

The team has no such aspirations for Backyard Baseball. Not only are parents and children able to play against each other locally (no co-operative multiplayer options, unfortunately), but Barnett and Berk want this togetherness to go beyond the screen.

“If you are inspired to go and get an actual glove and a ball and go outside and play, that is a huge win for us,” Barnett said.

“For those young fans who have not [played baseball] yet, they’re playing and saying ‘I get it. I can go and do this,’” Berk said. “And for the parents or adults playing with them, it’s ‘I want to go do this with you.’”

Playground Productions is helping enable this with new product partnerships. Pablo Sanchez is a sponsored athlete for Wilson Sporting Goods. Louisville Slugger is offering themed bats, including one based on the Aluminum Power power-up. The best part? These deals were initiated by people at Wilson and Louisville Slugger, aka “fans who have grown up to have now grown up to have cool jobs,” in Barnett’s words.

A fun part of testing the game for the team has been seeing how children, like their own families, react. Would kids be able to see what see millennials fell in love with?

“I was really struck by, when my nephew was picking players, he picked players with positive self-talk, and looked like they were excited to play,” Barnett said. “And you start to realize how important these characters and what they say can be to the development of a child.”

Another way that Backyard Baseball is trying to be inclusive is in the difficulty. Barnett and Berk promised there would be plenty of accessibility modes to get everyone involved, but the way they discussed the harder difficulties was especially interesting.

“Difficulty in our world is different from difficulty in some of the other sports titles out there,” said Barnett. “It’s not… having to click a million different buttons. It’s increased comedy. There are more fireball pitches. There’s more errors, there’s more kids that are falling or spinning around. Even if it’s difficult, you’re going to be laughing and having a good time.”

Near the end of our conversation, I asked Barnett and Berk who their favorite characters in the game were.

Barnett showed a wood carving the Playground Productions team had made for her of the commentary duo: Sunny Day and Vinnie the Gooch.

“She [Sunny] is the one reporting at every single game in the entire Backyard,” said Barnett. “No matter who’s playing, no matter what time of day, what time of year, you’ll see Sunny Day out there. I always imagined… that Sunny was always part of the assembly of how these games all get together. Somebody’s got to be organized in that environment to be reporting and bringing the kids together.”

A fitting answer, for a CEO who hired a PI to hunt down the rights to a franchise.

Berk’s answer, however, was a little more controversial: Ronny Dobbs.

“Ronny’s there because [his older sister] Sally’s there, right?” he began. “He’s not particularly good at any one skill. He falls and he makes errors, and he cries. But Ronny walks up to every at bat, hopping with glee towards the plate with renewed enthusiasm for each new play. I think that that’s so emblematic of the spirit of the backyard. When we fall and trip—and Ronny does that a lot—we get back up and we keep going. And there are players that are better than him, but they play with Ronny, too. They’re both on the same field.”

If that’s the kind of kids that Backyard Baseball helps inspire on the real diamond, the team at Playground Productions will be satisfied.

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