TITLE
How a Second-Grade Teacher Revived a Beloved Video Game
AUTHOR
Alessandra Schade
PUBLICATION
The New York Times
YEAR
2026
ARTICLE TYPE
Article
FROM THE ARTICLE
On a cloudless summer day, Lindsay Barnett was giving me a tour of Highland Park, a suburb just outside Chicago.“This was our football field,” she said, pointing to a stretch of grass. “That rock was the end zone.”
[…]
As we walked along, a car slowed down beside us. “Lindsay!” said the driver, Dana Gordon, a longtime resident of the neighborhood. “Are you moving back home?”
Barnett explained that she was just showing a reporter around.
“This girl’s a genius,” Gordon said, now addressing me. “A passionate Chicago public-school teacher — and now she’s bringing back my kids’ favorite video game.”
She was referring to Backyard Baseball, a point-and-click computer game from the late 1990s featuring a sandlot’s worth of cartoon kids. It taught a generation the rules of baseball, won their hearts with its cast of lovable misfits — and then it vanished.
COMPANIES MENTIONED
Humongous Entertainment
Mega Cat Studios
Playground Productions
GAMES MENTIONED
Backyard Baseball (1997)
Backyard Baseball (2026)
PEOPLE MENTIONED
Lindsay Barnett
Miles Bronstein
James Deighan
Jason Kelce
Travis Kelce
Nick Mirkovich
Ari Pinchot
Stuart Avi Savitsky
Chris Waters
Jim Westerkamp
PRINT AVAILABILITY
July 16, 2026