When we were making it, the fact that we were playing it all day, we knew something was there. The adventure games were great to play and work on - don’t get me wrong - I was always ready to play some kind of sports game. For me, it was a joy because I was not working on an adventure game. “I think it’s pretty amazing,” said Mirkovich, who created the video game. The Oakland Athletics used “Backyard Baseball” for its lineup during Players Weekend last season and the Houston Texans used “Backyard Football” to introduce its upcoming regular-season schedule. And their influence continues to grow.īut 21 years after the inception of the original “Backyard Baseball” video game, the Backyard Sports franchise continues to make waves whether it’s Backyard Baseball Night at PNC Field or, most recently, into Major League Baseball and the National Football League. If you were to ask Nick Mirkovich, Matt Mahon and Erik Haldi, three of the men responsible for bringing the hit video game alive, if they thought a minor league baseball team would one day reach out to them to bring Backyard Baseball Night to their park, they would have been stunned.īut on Saturday night, the love and impact of their video game will be felt by all. As soon as we were done outside, we’d go inside and get on the computer and play Backyard Sports. “We played wiffle ball outside and made our own fields, kind of like the game was. “Growing up, everything I did was either baseball or hockey and playing all the Backyard Sports games made it fun,” Payton said. The iconic game, that debuted in the late 1990s, featured 30 fictional kids and an assortment of former major leaguers, and whose impact helped shape the generation that currently plays pro ball for SWB.

Saturday marks Backyard Baseball Night at PNC Field, where the childhood video game will come to life for RailRiders players and fans. So “Backyard Baseball” and all of the Backyard Sports video games played a big role in the Scranton/Wilkes-Barre RailRiders outfielder’s childhood.

MOOSIC - Mark Payton grew up in a baseball household.Īnd if it wasn’t baseball, it was hockey. Tired of ads? Subscribers enjoy a distraction-free reading experience.

Backyard soccer mls edition online