Backyard Baseball 2001: The Greatest Baseball Game Ever
With Carlos Beltran retiring this week it ends something many people in there early to late 20s know and love. A childhood memory that you may have forgotten about. Lets put it this way... Carlos Beltran was the last active player to be playing that was in the 2001 classic Backyard Baseball 2001. Yep, thats right. Feel old yet? I know I am just 25 but it makes me feel like I am way older. I can still remember sitting in front of a computer for hours on end playing this game. Drafting a team with back then were just names on a screen with the best stats. This was my first real experience in the sports world and becoming fans of players and teams that were not right there present. Growing up in Texas the big thing was the Rangers and Nolan Ryan so, if it didn't have to do with that it was never on the TV. But with this game, it showed me other players that I had never heard of or even watched. Because of this game, i became a HUGE fan of Randy Johnson which sparked my Diamondbacks fandom. It showed me, other players, that
if it wasn't for this game I wouldn't know who they were.
If you take a look at the roster of this game something surprising happens. Of the 30 teams, there were 31 Professional players in the game. 9 of them are Hall of Famers. On top of that 6 of those 9 were First Ballot HoF. (Tony Gwenn, Cal Ripken Jr, Frank Thomas, Randy Johnson, Ken Griffey Jr., and Ivan Rodriguez) That alone is unreal. Then you look at the fact that the Reds the only team that had two players in the game both of the players are HOFers. (Ken Griffey Jr, Barry Larkin) Then take a look at the Future HoF (in my opinion) which was 8 of the remaining 22. (Derek Jeter, Chipper Jones, Vlad Guerrero, Curt Shilling, Carlos Beltron, Nomar Garciaparra, Kenny Lofton and Mark McGwire(yeah yeah I know "steroids"). Then within those 8, I think that two will be First Ballot (Jeter, and Jones). In this game, you could build a full team of at that point Future Hall of Famers and when you were young you really had no idea how good they were or going to be.
When you look at the hitters in this game. You can really see how unreal this game was (if you couldn't already just on the HoFers alone). This game had 4 of the Biggest Home Run hitters in the history of the game (Mark McGwire, Sammy Sosa, Barry Bonds, and Alex Rodriguez). Then you have Juan Gonzalez, who was one of the most feared hitters in the 90s at the end of his career. There is Mo Vaughn who even as a "kid" in this game was bigger than any other kid in the game and would hit the ball so far out of Tin Can Alley you would have to wait 5 minutes for him to make it around the bases. The goes on.
To look on the darker side of this game it did have 5 guys that have been accused of using steroids.(McGwire, Bonds, Sosa, Jose Canseco, and Arod) Yes, it is cheating now and yes it is not right. But back in the early 2000s, this wasn't illegal to do so you cant hold them to that standard.
So looking at the pitching you have 2 of the most dominant pitchers of this era in the game in Randy "The Big Unit" Johnson and Curl "Bloody Sock" Shillings. The Best right-hander and Left-hander in the 90s and early 2000s. If you saw your buddies team and they did not have one of these two guys on the mound you probably laughed and called them stupid.
Finally, you have Kenny Lofton who in my opinion is the one of if not the best base stealer in the past 30 years. With over 622 stolen bases. It was a given if you got this guy on base that you were going to steal and you were going to get it unless maybe the other team had Pudge (but that never happened for me).
In my opinion, this game is one of the best baseball games ever from all angles. being able to put pros with the other backyard kids. The fact that only having one player on every team and it having this many great players says something about how great the game of baseball was back in the early 2000s.