Backyard Games stamps are recognized with  eight designs, consisting of

Badminton,
Bocce,
Cornhole,
Croquet,
Flying disc,
Horseshoes,
Tetherball
A variation on pick-up baseball

The origin of croquet is obscure. Although the game has been played in roughly its present form for about 100 years, its antecedents extend back many centuries. As long ago as the 14th century, peasants in Brittany and Southern France amused themselves playing a game called Paille Maille, in which crude mallets were used to knock balls through hoops made of bent willow branches. This ancestral version of croquet persisted, and by the 17th century, Pele Mele, as it was called in England, had become popular with Charles II and his court. Pall Mall, as the game finally came to be called, was played with a curved club, a wooden ball, and two hoops. The court was often made of powdered cockleshells, and the hoops were decorated with flowers. The game lost favor in the 18th and 19th centuries, and little was heard of it until the 1850s.

In 1852 or 1853, croquet was introduced into England from Ireland, where a game called crooky, using implements similar to the modern ones, had been played in Portarlington, Queen's County, Kilkee, in County Clare, and Kingstown, near Dublin, since the 1830s. No one knows how the game reached Ireland, although it has been suggested that it was introduced by French nuns or possibly by French refugees. According to the Oxford English Dictionary, the word "croquet" is a form of the word croche, an old North French word used to mean "shepherd's crook."

Croquet was introduced into England from Ireland in the early 1850s by a Mr. Spratt, who had been given a set of croquet implements by a Miss McNaughten around 1840. Miss McNaughten informed Mr. Spratt that the game had been introduced into Ireland but that she had seen it in its primitive state in either Southern France or Italy. The crude and rustic game observed by Miss McNaughten was played with hoops made of willow rods. The villagers constructed the mallets by boring a hole in a hard, knotty piece of wood and inserting a broomstick for the handle. Mr. Spratt kept the croquet equipment for several years before selling it to an enterprising man whose family is the foremost manufacturer of croquet equipment today.

By 1865, croquet had achieved wide acceptance and had spread throughout England and its colonies. During these early days of popularity in England, croquet was primarily an after-dinner recreation. It was played with ten large hoops, two pegs, and odd-sized mallets, on a lawn that measured 50 by 30 yards. The game was played as a sequence game, which meant that the turns and the balls were played sequentially according to the color of the ball. It is usually still played this way in the United States, though in Great Britain, in singles, while the turns alternate, the balls may be played in any order.

Croquet's great popularity in England continued through the 1860s and into the 1870s. In 1861, Routledge's Handbook of Croquet appeared. This book, probably the sport's first rule book, still basically governs the game. The 1860s also saw the appearance of the game's first recorded champions. In 1867 Walter Jones-Whitmore won a tournament at Evesham and became, according to some, croquet's first champion. Jones-Whitmore was also the first to attempt to devise a system of strategy and tactics, which he published in a book called Croquet Tactics in 1868. One year after Jones-Whitmore's victory at Evesham, Walter Peel, one of the major figures in the history of croquet, became the game's first true champion, and by 1869, the All-England Croquet Club was founded at Wimbledon. When Peel won his championship, the hoops were six inches wide, five inches wide for the final two rounds. In the game's early days, the hoops had been as wide as eight inches, but they were gradually reduced in size to four inches by 1872.
 
Croquet was introduced to the United States in the early 1870s. The sport was first taken up by high society in the New York area, but it soon achieved general popularity throughout the country. Lawn tennis was introduced here at about the same time, but from the 1870s through the 1890's, croquet enthusiasts far outnumbered the tennis players. A croquet set was mandatory equipment for every estate, and civic leaders provided sets for public parks, which previously had not had facilities for any sport played on grass. Croquet was quite popular with women and was one of the first games played in the United States by both sexes. To this day, it is the only sport in which men and women compete with a similar handicap. Women players are more prominent today in Australia than in any other. In 1882, the National Croquet Association was formed to help supervise the game. The association was active into the 1890s when lawn tennis suddenly surged in popularity, and croquet enthusiasm began to wane. The ebb in croquet's popularity was due, in part, to the game's surprisingly unsavory reputation. It had become associated with gambling, drinking, and philandering to such an extent that it was banned in Boston.

It wasn't until the mid-1890s that interest in croquet began to revive in England, and several years later the sport's popularity began to return in the United States. Although croquet was played in a few places, tournaments had all but disappeared. The game was still played as a sequence game, with hoops with dimensions reduced from four inches to three and one quarter inches in 1871. One year later, the Hale setting of six hoops and two pegs was introduced, and this setting continued in use for the next 50 years, although the hoop dimensions were again enlarged. The croquet renaissance began in 1896 when Walter Peel and Captain Drummond founded the United All-England Croquet Association at Roehampton, England. This organization, with typical British understatement, is called the Croquet Association and is still the ruling body of British and Commonwealth croquet. The final rounds of the All-England Handicap, one of croquet's most important championships, are played annually at Roehampton. Croquet's popularity continued undiminished until the outbreak of World War I.

An ocean away, croquet's revival began in the United States. In 1899, a small group of players from the United States met in Norwich, Connecticut, to revise the old Routledge Rules and revitalize the game. The new rules provided for standardized court size, reduced hoop dimensions, and the use of only four balls instead of the cumbersome eight. Two balls were used by each player, or two per team for doubles.

Croquet's popularity in the United States has been increasing since the end of World War I. In the 1930s, the WPA and the National Recreation Association added croquet sets to their inventory of standard playground equipment. The sport also became a status favorite of literary and entertainment people in the '30s and '40s.

In 1922, the Willis setting of six hoops and one peg was introduced in England. This layout is still the one most used today. During the mid-20s, the first test matches for the MacRobertson Shield, croquet's international trophy, were held when Australia sent a team to England in 1925.