

Nick grew up playing wiffle ball with his neighborhood friends, and he went on to work for a video game company in Seattle called Humongous Entertainment. "If you hit it into the neighbor's yard, it's an automatic out - and you have go get it." "First base is the chimney," Nick Mirkovich recalls. Pablo’s roots can be traced all the way back to a makeshift field in Olympia, Washington. Yet here was this hit computer game from 20 years ago that starred a Hispanic character - who's still popular today.Īt Only A Game, we started to wonder - who invented Pablo Sanchez? And why?

These days, you hear a lot - probably not enough - about the shortage of minority characters in children's books, games and movies.

"Also, because I took Spanish, I was like, 'Oh yeah, cool, cool. As far as I can remember, he only spoke to Spanish." "If I remember correctly, the shirt did not cover his entire belly," says another.īut there is something else that every former Backyard Baseball player seems to remember about Pablo Sanchez: "He was like an 8 year old with a dad bod before dad bods were a thing," remembers one former Backyard Baseball enthusiast. "He'd come up to bat, and the bat would be almost the same size as him," former Only A Game intern Ryan Fitzgerald recalls. Pablo was the best of the bunch - he was fast enough to nab infield hits, strong enough to belt home runs and skilled enough to pitch. Pablo Sanchez was the standout character in Backyard Baseball - a popular computer game released in 1997. Instead of starring pro players, the original Backyard Baseball featured only cartoon children. (Cartoon children who could blast 400-foot home runs.) If you were a sports fan born in the '90s, you probably already know that. "Pablo was like Babe Ruth crossed with Mike Trout crossed with Sandy Koufax." (Timballs/YouTube) This article is more than 5 years old. Pablo Sanchez was nicknamed the "Secret Weapon" but he wasn't much of a secret.
