There are many reasons that Backyard Baseball became a video game that came to define a generation. It was a surprisingly complex game given the ostensibly simple point-and-click controls. It combined the innocence of childhood friendships with competitive sports. Most notably, it offered a ragtag group of diverse, quirky characters whose idiosyncrasies elevated them well above the mundane, cookie-cutter appearance that was typical for sports video games at the time, which usually offered an amalgamation of oafish, blocky pixels which could have just as easily been Wayne Gretzky or Darren Langdon.
With professional sports wrought with hyper-competitiveness, commercialism, and scandal, Backyard Baseball was a reminder of the origins of sports and how wholesome they can be.