Backyard Baseball Remake Free
How To Play Original Backyard Baseball

I wasted a lot of summers playing Backyard Baseball in the late 90s and early 2000s. At times, it was better than playing the actual sport. Did anyone else just sit in the outfield and pick blades of grass because the ball never came to you?

Backyard Baseball takes you back to when you were a kid, when baseball was a game, and the team was hastily put together among the kids in the neighborhood. Playing for Real Humongous Entertainment reached back into the past and captured all those childhood memories of baseball and digitally assembled them into this game. Angela Delvecchio. Angela often gets lost in the mix. That's mainly because players don't. Backyard Baseball is a fun sports management simulation video game that allow you to customize your baseball player. Compete in an all-out local baseball tournament. Features power-ups, and other fun aspects that make the game more interesting.

Of course, Backyard Baseball was fun because you would stack your team with the likes of Pablo Sanchez, Kiesha Phillips, Amir Khan, and Pete Wheeler. I never bothered playing with the crappy kids like Kimmy Eckman or Ricky Johnson.

But who doesn’t like a good underdog story akin to Bad News Bears? After watching the 2005 remake of that movie with Billy Bob Thornton, I felt inspired to take a ragtag group of misfits and see if I could, in fact, polish a turd. It was time to revisit an easy kids game and see if I could make it a challenging experience for a veteran gamer. Spoiler alert: if you do this you will have loads of fun and loads of misery. I highly recommend.

I downloaded Backyard Baseball 2003, set the difficulty on hard, removed the pitch locator, and started picking the kids with the lowest overall stats in batting, running, pitching, and fielding. With the help of the Backyard Baseball subreddit, I chose the following.

Kimmy Eckman

Batting: 6/10

Running 4/10

Pitching 3/10

Fielding: 3/10

Total score: 16/40

Ricky Johnson

Batting: 1/10

Running: 8/10

Pitching: 5/10

Fielding: 5/10

Total: 19/40

Dmitri Petrovich

Batting: 8/10

Running: 7/10

Pitching: 1/10

Fielding: 3/10

Total: 19/40

Gretchen Hasselhoff

Batting: 2/10

Running: 8/10

Pitching: 6/10

Fielding: 4/10

Total: 20/40

Ashley Webber

Batting: 5/10

Running: 7/10

Pitching: 6/10

Fielding: 3/10

Total: 21/40

Billy Jean Blackwood

Batting: 8/10

Running: 6/10

Pitching: 4/10

Fielding: 4/10

Total: 22/40

Kenny Kawaguchi

Batting: 3/10

Running: 8/10

Pitching: 7/10

Fielding: 4/10

Total: 22/40

Lisa Crocket

Batting: 5/10

Running: 8/10

Pitching: 6/10

Fielding: 4/10

Total: 23/40

Maria Luna

Batting: 6/10

Running: 7/10

Pitching: 3/10

Fielding: 7/10

Total: 23/40

Crazy Melonheads average

Batting: 4.8

Running: 7

Pitching: 4.5

Fielding: 4.1

To show you how lacking my team is in comparison to most players in the league, here Pablo Sanchez’s stats:

Pablo Sanchez:

Batting: 10/10

Running: 9/10

Pitching: 5/10

Fielding: 10/10

Total: 34/40

And when you play on hard, most of the random AI players who aren’t playable are just as skilled.

I named my coach B Bob Thornton and tried to channel his drunken performance as I coached these misfits to glory. I dub them the Crazy Melonheads, and make their colors yellow and orange because that’s as close to Bad News Bears colors as I could get. For the homefield, I tried to find the most depressing backdrop and settled upon the junkyard, Scrapco. I chose to make games last six innings because nine are just way too long in this game.

After the first practice, Coach B Bob Thornton made the following 10-second assessment:

Game 1 vs Cincinnati Reds

The game optimized my players for the positions to which they are best suited. But you see how terrible they are at fielding so I need to rely on solid pitching.

Kenny Kawaguchi may have a 7/10 in his pitching stat, but his fast pitch radius is as big as a great pitcher’s radius when he is exhausted. I won’t be able to accurately throw pitches on the edge of the batter’s box to screw over the AI, unless it’s a slow pitch, which he excels at.

The Cincinnati Reds play at Cement Gardens, a parking lot surrounded by buildings with an alleyway leading out of left field, which is the ideal spot to hit toward for homeruns and ground rule doubles because there is no fence.

Let’s play ball! Or not. I quickly realized just how terrible my team was at batting. They could only hit weak grounders whether I put the batting setting to line drive or power. It was easy for the AI to throw them all out at first base. This was going to be a long season of Backyard Baseball.

By the second inning, I figured I better turn this weakness into an advantage. I let them hit grounders and prayed for the best. It somehow was the answer. The grounders all died in that sweet spot in the infield – between home and third.

This strategy set up Webber on second and Kawaguchi on first. Lisa “Mad Dog” Crockett hit a perfect line drive into the gap over second base. Webber and Kawaguchi scored and I was up 2-0. I knew this game would be easy.

Later in the game, the AI walked Maria Luna with the bases juiced, making the score 3-0.

Luckily, the AI put up a fight thanks to Ken Griffey Jr, who hit an RBI single and then later scored himself, making the game 3-2. But they never got a chance to rally.

Dmitri hit a two-run homer, making the score 5-2. I scored another two runs thanks to AI fumbles and errors. The game ended 7-2. Team record 1-0.

So maybe this won’t be a challenging season?

Game 2 vs Houston Astros

WRONG.

The Reds were just a terrible team because the Astro’s destroyed me.

There were only two players on their roster as mediocre as mine. The rest had Pablo Sanchez-like stats and only swung for the fences.

Jeff Bagwell, who you will hear me complain a lot about in this article, hit a three-run homer in the first inning. WTF.

I answered back with one point thanks to an undergrounder power up. But in the fifth inning, I tried to get cute and have Kenny throw a zig-zag right down the middle. Some random AI player got a three-run homer again. And because they successfully hit a wacky pitch, it gave them a batting power up.

Back to back to back Aluminum Power home runs. Final Score: Astros – 9, Melonheads – 3.

Team record 1-1.

Games 3 and 4

I faced the Pirates and then the Reds again since they are in my division. After my first two games, I optimized my batting order and defensive lineup so I could have a better chance at winning.

I squeaked by the Pirates 3-2. They were a fast team and constantly tried to steal bases. But none of my fielders can throw the ball fast enough to stop them. I only won thanks to the crazy bunt power up and my runners being decently fast

The Reds were again terrible and I crushed them 6

Backyard Baseball Remake