Last updated on January 3rd, 2026 at 05:51 am
Backyard Baseball '01 – Family Game Review
Backyard Baseball '01 is a Family/Sports game from Playground Productions LLC, first launched in 8th July 2025.
It’s rated 4+ and currently has 429+ ratings on the App Store.
What Makes Backyard Baseball '01 Stand Out
STEP UP TO THE PLATE
Relive the second baseball game in the Backyard Sports franchise, now enhanced to run on iOS. Whether you're picking your dream team, playing a pick-up game, or diving into a full season, step up to the plate and experience the game that made baseball fun for everyone!
Backyard Baseball ‘01 teams up the Backyard kids with Backyardified MLB legends. Create your own Backyard team, customize your uniforms, and strategize to win the Championship. Play a single pick-up game or play through an entire season. Backyard Baseball ‘01 features intuitive controls for all ages!
SWING BACK INTO BASEBALL
Enjoy baseball like it’s 2001!
30 Charming Backyard kids
Legendary MLB Players
MLB Team Marks
Hilarious Bloopers
8 Classic Ballparks
9 Pitching Power-ups and 4 batting Power-ups
Lively commentary from Sunny Day and Vinnie
To get into the swing of things, choose a batter and face Mr. Clanky for some batting practice. This is where you’ll learn just when to click to make your chosen batter hit the ball!
THE GOAT RETURNS
Play with the legend himself, Pablo Sanchez. Build a roster from a cast of 30 hilarious child athletes and 28 legendary pros that made Backyard Baseball ‘01 a sports classic. Returning MLB players include Derek Jeter, Alex Rodriguez, Cal Ripken Jr., Sammy Sosa, Mike Piazza, Randy Johnson, Nomar Garciaparra, Jeff Bagwell, Jason Giambi, Chipper Jones, Jeromy Burnitz, Mark McGwire, Shawn Green, Vladimir Guerrero, Kenny Lofton, Jason Kendall, Barry Larkin, Marty Cordova, Mo Vaughn, Raul Mondesi, Curt Schilling, Alex Gonzalez, Juan Gonzalez, Larry Walker, Carlos Beltran, Tony Gwynn, Ivan Rodriguez, and Jose Canseco.
Game Modes include:
Choose from three modes of play (Easy Mode, Medium Mode, Hard Mode)
Random Pick-up: A quick way to jump right in! The computer chooses a random team for you and itself and the game starts immediately.
Single Game: You take turns with the computer choosing players from a random pool of characters.
Season: You pick your home field, create a team, and manage the team through a 14 game series. The opposing teams are computer generated. At the end of the season, the best two teams advance to the BBL playoffs (best of 3). If you keep winning, you’ll compete in the Super Entire Nation Tournament and Ultra Grand Championship of the Universe Series!
ADDITIONAL INFORMATION
At our core, we are fans first – not just of video games, but of the Backyard Sports franchise. Fans have asked for accessible and legal ways to play their original Backyard titles for years, and we are excited to deliver.
Without having access to the source code, there are hard limitations on the experience we can create. As an example, we can’t use the original 32bit code to support modern macOS, as even with an incredibly clever wrapper, macOS can’t execute the binaries.
Backyard Baseball ‘01 runs well, looks better than ever, includes new bonus features to test your mettle, and creates a new installation for digital preservation within the Backyard Sports catalog that allows the next generation of fans to fall in love with the game.
This Family game offers engaging gameplay and regular updates for mobile players.
Player Feedback
As a newer release, Backyard Baseball '01 is building its player community. Early feedback suggests .
Recent Updates & Development
Latest Update: 26th September 2025
Recent improvements include:
- Optimizations and compatibility improvements
Download & Availability
Backyard Baseball '01 is available through the official App Store for iOS devices.
Get Backyard Baseball '01 on App Store
Requirements: Requires iPhone 5s / iPad Air / iPad Air (Cellular) / iPad Mini 2 (Retina) / iPad Mini 2 (Retina, Cellular) / iPhone 6 / iPhone 6 Plus / iPad Air 2 / iPad Air 2 (Cellular) / iPad Mini 3 or later.
Compatible with iPhone and iPad devices.
Player Experience Highlights
Community Insight:
We love this game could we get backyard hockey.
This game is so fun. You can basically do anything you can do with real baseball. You can bunt you can slide. You can do close call plays. Please download the game.
We feel like a kid again.. Game is amazing.. Clean for Everyone to play. Please name us a game that is perfect and dont need tweaking.. This game is great.
Can u online play back pls and fix that bug.
This game is sooooo much fun for us! We like the graphics for some reason bcuz it is old school mode, we also like Pablo Snchez because he is the goat in this game of backyard baseball Thank you Playground Productions.
We think it's a great classic game that plays well if you don't understand the game u might not like it but it's just how we left it amazing.
Please add controller support for all Backyard Sports games. Thank you! Love your games! Also, allow manual tag up, because its annoying to have double plays from the other team when your players halfway or more to the next base.
Use to love this game growing up! A couple things though, playing on a massive phone, its tough that you have to touch the square everytime to hit – a good product update would be to just tap the screen.. Additionally, the game speed could be quicker.
Would make the game a lot easier and simpler to control and theres a lot of open space on screen so why not.
We love this game, however it wont let us get past the divisional series. It is giving us a scummerror out of bounds when we win the game. Sad day.
A great option for the mobile version would be to have a button on the right hand side of the screen to swing, instead of having to touch inside the batters box. Your thumb gets in the way of trying to see the pitch. Additionally for switching stances you could have the button on left hand side. We dont even use stances because we accidentally swing if we try. We think this would improve the mobile experience greatly. Otherwise love the game and great work getting this on a mobile platform.
We were so happy to see this we had to buy it, but where is Ken Griffey jr? :(.
When playing on an iPad with the keyboard and trackpad you can select things with the cursor but the cursor isnt visible on the screen.
We have been playing this game again after finally finding out that its on mobile and we had been playing season play and there has been an error and cant keep going.
The great is great and everything but we really miss Ken Griffey jr and Barry bonds and frank thomas in the game. Our son is really disappointed about that. So if you have sometime to bring Ken Griffey jr,Barry bonds,frank thomas. That would change everything. Thank you From Brianne Zaborowski.
Game is fun, but Im experiencing a bug that wont let us advance to the next game. SCUMMERROR [7,396] Array read 44[0][10] out of bounds, dim[O.0][O…9].
Ken Griffey Jr is supposed to be representing the Reds in the 2001 version not Barry Larkin. Pros like Griffey Jr., Sosa, Jeter and Nomar were fast enough to leg out a bunt or a shallow infield ground ball in the computer game.
Literally we want nothing more than to be able to relive our childhood by playing all of the backyard sports games. However, these apps are not giving us the excitement we felt then. The year is 2025, to play these games, the controls and layout should reflect that. Theres several games in the App Store that use better layouts that make more sense than what is being put out on these apps. Please modernize the controls. Ive purchased every app youve put out and would love to continue to support this franchise, but please for the love of god figure out how to make the controls better.
Not fun without control options.
The Cleveland Guardians were the Cleveland INDIANS in 2001, we dont know why BYB would make an senseless decision here to appease the smaller percent of customers/population that is radical Leftists, if this was BYB 2025 it definitely isnt an issue. This is just altering a great game and accuracy of 2001 teams and logos for no legitimate reason. Guess BYB forgot that Woke is dead and is the only factor from is being a 5 rating.
Why change the Cleveland teams name to the Guardians, but leave in the EXPOs???? Either update the whole league to current names or give us the teams from 01.
Add babe Ruth and put backyard baseball 2003 on mobile from Coen in 2025.
We use a phone controller sometimes. We think backyard baseball would be really fun on here. Its the BackBone brand. Please add controller support.
Whats not to love? This game was legendary in the early 2000s and we couldnt be happier to see it resurrected today. We spent hours playing it on a second hand Compaq desktop when we were a kid, and now we can enjoy wherever we want. Five stars.
Thank you so much for bringing these classics back. Game has been super stable on our M2 iPad Pro. We have gone through 3 seasons with no issues.
Please add controller support for all Backyard Sports games. Thank you! Love your games.
2 iPhone specific fixes we would recommend to the Devs: 1. The iPhone home bar at bottom of the screen should fade out in full screen apps like this. Currently it does not, it is constant and blocking a portion of the game. (iPhone 11, iOS 18.1) 2. We understand this is not a 16:9 game but if youre sticking a stationary non-changing background image behind the game, players now have to worry about screen burn-in, especially when playing the game for long periods of time. It just seems like this was an after thought and we would prefer it be black or animated or fade out every so often so Im not worried about screen burn-in. The game itself is just like we remember, but really well optimized for the iPhone! We honestly cant believe you guys removed the Oakland from the Athletics. Im sure MLB made you do that, but it breaks our heart no city even wants to be associated with our favorite team and this greedy owner. Anyway, great game, we loved playing when we were young and great job by the devs to bring it to iPhone in its practically original form.
The title says it all. Also, there are slight screen vertical lines on the sides of the Megacat opening. Please maybe even add a CRT computer screen filter somewhere on the pause screen.
Thank you so much for bringing back a game we loved so dearly as a kid. Please bring back the other games as well.
This games great and we literally cant believe it originally came out in 2000! We like its newer graphics and love the mlb players and Im glad you guys could fix the glitches.
We we're going on vacation to Lancaster PA. We just left Kalahari in the waterpark. We know just give us a be a tracking to us let us tell you something.
Great game no complaints but can we get 05 version for the phone would be awesome.
Day 6 of asking to add option to link controller in season mode.
Its exactly how we remember. Can you make it multi player to play against other people.
After the update it went from a 4/10 to a 10/10.
Playing this game as a kid was a core memory for us. It's a fantastic way to introduce new generations to baseball and get families involved in sports together. Our favorite character is Kenny Kawaguchi; his use of a wheelchair is a great example of the game's focus on inclusion. For a modern re-release, adding cloud save functionality is essential. This would allow players to access their game progress across all their devices, from an iPhone to an iPad. Additionally, releasing a version for Mac computers would open the game up to a wider audience. Additionally, this game needs to tweak to be more touch responsive Ultimately, Backyard Baseball '01 remains a delightful trip down memory lane. While it could use a few modern tweaks like cloud saves and better touch responsiveness, its timeless charm, inclusive characters like Kenny Kawaguchi, and simple, fun gameplay make it a must-play for anyone who wants to revisit their childhood or share the joy of baseball with a new generation.
In the playoffs we had our second strike and hit a foul and kept getting out that happened a bunch of times but other than that its a pretty good game that you can play on road trips or something.
You need to add the skip feature so we dont need to see the intro every time we play.
After first playoff series in season mode we get an error, like thats the end of the game they cared to program. Lazy? We paid $5 for this, same for 97. And even dropped 10 on the steam and couldnt make it work. Love the game but its too easy too, even on hard with no indicator. Head to head online would be a nice addition.
Hey Im enjoying the game n all but Im picking the players for our team n we realize that its missing Ken Griffey Jr & Barry Bonds.
Had high hopes. Game was a huge let down for $5.
OUTFIELDING iS BROKEN, PLEASE FIX!!! Runners shouldnt advance when a fly out is coming.
Man we LOVED playing this game back in the day! So happy to see its an iOS app especially after playing the BYB 97 app. But disappointed that the game is missing some mlb players (Barry Bonds, Ken Griffey Jr, etc). Hoping an update will add them back in as opposed to new custom characters.
All the fun it used to be, but golly you just gotta change where you tap to swing the bat. Why cant we just tap off to the side so Im not blocking our own view with our hand.
We want to love this game so badly, idk if its our phone screen or what but trying to swing at pitches is driving us insane. Ill click to swing and they wont swing. This has happened since we downloaded it. Its super annoying. Other than that its awesome super nostalgic, but any suggestions to getting that fixed please let us know.
We receive an error in the playoffs after the completion of a game. We swipe out and repeat. Same result. Please fix.
When you can play its great, most of the time you cant due to this error that happens at the end of every game for us.
Needs to support a mouse like the original game or have buttons for actions like swinging instead of clicking randomly on screen and hoping the desired action happens.
The emulator doesnt work past game nine.
Is it perfect? No. Neither was the computer game. But playing again with our childhood favorites? Hoping theres more to come for this franchise.
User feedback from Apple App Store
App Details
- Version: 1.4.31
- Size: 358.68 MB
- iOS: 15.0 or later
- Languages: EN
- Content Advisory:
- Developer: Playground Productions LLC
Last updated: 26th September 2025 | Genre: Family, Sports | Developer: Playground Productions LLC