Top 5 Backyard Heroes

By Will Harper

Growing up as a kid in South Carolina in the 90’s and 00’s, there were a handful of guys that I wanted to be like when I was playing in the yard with my friends. If we were shooting hoops, I wanted to be like Mike. If we were hitting around baseballs, there was no better template than Chipper Jones. If we were playing a game of football, I wanted to throw the ball around just like Jake Delhomme. Sports heroes to a kid are a powerful influence. They give kids someone to look up to. Someone to model both their game, and their personality after. Granted, most kids will never get the opportunity to shoot a 3 in an NBA game, see a 98 mph fastball standing in the box of an MLB game, or get a chance to take a snap in the 2-minute drill of an NFL game. However, this doesn’t mean that kids shouldn’t dream. All of the guys that you watch on your television today, started of as a bright-eyed kid with a dream to be like Kobe, Brady, or Jeter.

This nostalgia back to my childhood got me thinking… Who are the athletes of today that kids look up to the most and want to model their games after? The fun thing about Backyard Heroes is that it can be so geographical. I mentioned 3 athletes in my introduction that I looked up to and pretended to be in the yard. Those 3 were Michael Jordan, Chipper Jones, and Jake Delhomme. Michael Jordan is obviously a world-wide name. So much so, that I only said “Mike” earlier, and you knew exactly who I was referring to. Chipper Jones is a guy that pretty much all baseball fans knew 15-20 years ago during his prime. But Jake Delhomme… Jake Delhomme was the QB for the Carolina Panthers in the early 2000’s that led the “Cardiac Cats” to Super Bowl XXXVIII to face a young, promising QB named Tom Brady and the New England Patriots. Now, as a Panthers fan, I loved Jake Delhomme, but if you’re a Cowboys fan living in Texas or a Bills fan living in upstate New York, you couldn’t care less about Jake Delhomme. That’s the beauty of Backyard Heroes, they can be guys that everyone knows (MJ), guys that most people know (Chipper), or guys that are so regionalized that you have to explain who they are 17 years after that lead their team to the Super Bowl (Jake).

For the sake of this article, I’m going to try to make these picks as nationally relevant as I can. Full disclosure, I’m not a huge soccer or hockey fan, so I’m not as in touch with the most popular players in those sports, so I’m mostly sticking to what I know.

Without further ado… let’s hop into the Top 5 Backyard Heroes:

#5 Mike Trout- CF Los Angeles Angels

Mike Trout is, hands down, the best baseball player that I’ve ever seen. He hits everything (with power). He makes ridiculously amazing catches in the outfield. Plus, he’s a great ambassador for the game. Any kid growing up playing baseball could benefit tremendously from watching how Mike plays the game. I can see kids now, climbing the fence to rob a homer and imagining themselves as Trout doing the same thing in The Show.

#4 Christian McCaffrey- RB Carolina Panthers

This is as close as I could possibly come to a “homer” pick. However, there is no better non-QB in the NFL today to model your game after than CMC. The guy is the total package. He can run between the tackles. He can run over you. He can run around you. He can catch. He can just flat out do it all. I can see kids in the backyard today juke one of their friends out of their shoes on their way to the end zone, marked between the tree and the fence post, and imagine what it must be like to be CMC doing the same thing to a defender on his way to pay dirt in Bank of America Stadium.

#3 Stephen Curry- PG Golden State Warriors

I think that basketball and soccer are the most mimic-able sports because there are more one-on-one matchups in those sports. One-on-one matchups lead to more mimic-able moments. Steph is the king of modern basketball. Isolation and 3-point shots. Steph breaks people down on the dribble, jacks up beautiful threes, and makes slick passes to open teammates. Kids love shooting the rock from deep. I am a 6 ft 4 in guy that was always pegged as the “big man” on my basketball teams growing up. However, I loved shooting from the outside, even if I was only allowed to in practice and pickup games. Now, with basketball as a whole shifting more towards an outside shooting game, Steph easily becomes a top 5 guy that kids want to be like.

#2 LeBron James- PG/SG/SF/PF Los Angeles Lakers

LeBron does it all… literally. I had to point 4 positions on my introduction for him because he plays all of them regularly. LeBron has been the best player in basketball for over the last decade, and he has a legitimate case to be the GOAT (my vote is still for MJ, but that’s anther story for another day). He can do it all on the court. He’s the best player on the attack to the rim that I’ve ever seen. He’s borderline unstoppable at doing that when he has a head full of steam. Kids all over the world today know who LeBron is. He is the MJ of this generation. All kids on the court want to be like Bron. And honestly, I see exactly why they do. Again, he does IT ALL on the court.

#1 Patrick Mahomes- QB Kansas City Chiefs

Football is king in America. And there is no bigger name in the game right now than Patrick Mahomes. His throws and pocket creativity are legendary. The way that he moves around to make throws at angles that no normal QB would ever think of making is incredible to watch. I imagine that the number of no-look passes in backyard football has seen a 100,000% spike since Mahomes broke one off a couple of years ago. When I first thought about this article, Mahomes was the very first guy to come to mind. If I were a kid right now, I would want to be just like him. And now that he has the largest contract in sports history and is part owner of an MLB franchise, who’s to say that I still don’t want to be just like him.