"Tarps off" phenomenon reaches ridiculous new heights during Cardinals-Rangers game

The "tarps off" section at Busch Stadium received a splash of nostalgia on June 2 when the St. Louis Cardinals took on the Texas Rangers during "Backyard Baseball Night," where fans with a theme ticket could take home a bobblehead of the kid version of Mark McGwire, one of the most feared sluggers in Backyard Baseball 2001. That wasn't all that fans of that franchise were treated to, as Backyard Sports icon Pablo Sanchez paid a visit to the raucous shirtless section in right field, mingling with fans while displaying his trademark belly button.

As St. Louis fans are aware, the Cardinals popularized the "tarps off" craze that is sweeping baseball, and Sanchez's appearance could spread to other ballparks, as the Cardinals are not the only team that is capitalizing on the re-release of the classic CD-ROM games: The Milwaukee Brewers had their own version of Sanchez roaming the ballpark, and the New York Mets and San Francisco Giants will hold their own Backyard Baseball Nights later in the summer.

I was a rabid fan of the Backyard Sports series in the early 2000s and attended this game to claim a McGwire bobblehead and enjoy the tributes to the legendary series, including the scoreboard representations of several Cardinals hitters drawn in Backyard Sports style.

The Cardinals showed some love to some other Backyard Baseball kids

Sanchez receives the bulk of the attention from fans given his otherworldly skills in most of the games and the fact that he solely speaks Spanish — unless you go the player cards section in certain games and hold the Shift key, in which case, he will say a line a dialogue in English — but the Cardinals also made sure to let some other kids from the franchise receive some time in the sun, as they scanned the crowd after one of the innings to find fan lookalikes of Gretchen Hasselhoff, Tony Delvecchio, Angela Delvecchio, Achmed Khan and Pete Wheeler.

Those who played the Backyard Sports games as they were being released may remember the drastic drop-off in quality that the games suffered in 2005 after Atari laid off much of the development staff for Humongous Entertainment, but now the series may be returning to its roots, as a new Backyard Baseball game is scheduled for launch on July 9. Whether you're a baseball lifer like Stephanie Morgan, a pocket protector-wearing intellectual like Dmitri Petrovich, a comedian like Ernie Steele or just an all-around dynamo like Sanchez, there will be someone for you in this game.

The Cardinals leaned into millennials' memories of the series with the McGwire bobblehead while also drawing in more casual fans of the series with the universally recognizable Sanchez in the tarps off section. Although the Cardinals lost to the Rangers by a score of 7-4, Partyin' Pablo stole the show that night.

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