{"id":85648,"date":"2026-07-09T12:00:00","date_gmt":"2026-07-09T16:00:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/vgvote.com\/?p=85648"},"modified":"2026-07-09T12:37:48","modified_gmt":"2026-07-09T16:37:48","slug":"how-one-teacher-and-a-private-investigator-revived-the-beloved-franchise-of-your-childhood","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/vgvote.com\/?p=85648","title":{"rendered":"How One Teacher (And A Private Investigator) Revived The Beloved Franchise Of Your Childhood"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

The Backyard Sports series’ resurgence began a few years ago with a re-release of the classic 1997 game Backyard Baseball<\/a>, but this month’s launch of Backyard Baseball–an all-new entry–is a monumental step for a franchise that had been on ice for years. But getting there wasn’t easy, requiring years of work (and the help of a private investigator) to even acquire the rights, let alone find a development partner who could revive such a legendary franchise.<\/p>\n

Playground Productions CEO Lindsay Barnett was up to the challenge, ultimately pivoting from her job as an elementary-school teacher when it became clear she was capable of bringing Backyard Baseball to a new generation of baseball fans. And now, the time has come for those kids (and their parents, if we’re being honest) to see just what Barnett and her team have been cooking up.\u00a0<\/p>\n

Making the best of a bad situation <\/p>\n

While the Backyard Sports franchise is a pop-culture staple for many Millennial sports fans, it was essentially dead prior to the COVID-19 pandemic. Barnett was teaching second grade in Chicago at the time, and as her students shifted to remote-learning setups and she had a chance to ask them about what kinds<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

The Backyard Sports series’ resurgence began a few years ago with a re-release of the classic 1997 game Backyard Baseball, but this month’s launch of Backyard Baseball–an all-new entry–is a monumental step for a franchise that had been on ice for years. But getting there wasn’t easy, requiring years of work (and the help of…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":105,"featured_media":85650,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[56],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-85648","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-external"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/vgvote.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/85648"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/vgvote.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/vgvote.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/vgvote.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/105"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/vgvote.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=85648"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/vgvote.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/85648\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":85651,"href":"https:\/\/vgvote.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/85648\/revisions\/85651"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/vgvote.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/85650"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/vgvote.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=85648"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/vgvote.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=85648"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/vgvote.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=85648"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}