Now that a strike seems unavoidable, we can hope that this time MLB gets it right by unjuicing balls and players and implimenting a salary cap. And
while they're at it, they might wanna throw out Dud, I mean ... Bud Selig and replace him with the HOF's and ESPN's esteemed Joe Morgan as Commish.
If they can let an unsavory owner flunkie help ruin the game, then a class act diplomat from the players camp might save what's left of our national pastime from itself -- before the fans strike too. Get your pickets here!
While we wait and cross our fingers as to what comes next, thank God we still have baseball video games to fall back on when the drought comes. I'm talking about the PC variety, not the kiddie console toys that mirror the shock- jacked journeys of lighter than air baseball HR flights.
3 Hall Of Fame PC game name brands that come to mind are the dinosaur Earl Weaver Baseball, award-winning Tony La Russa Baseball and slick modern day ad campaigned High Heat Baseball series.
Once upon a time when graphics meant nothing and gameplay was all that mattered in the 7 11 days of Pong and Asteroids, the Weaver game was the 1st computer baseball product to turn grown adults into kids again.
Although laughable by today's 3D standards, the genre had to start somewhere. The box was pretty but the game on your PC screen was a sight for sore eyes. Yet if you could close them, this made for a fun, data realistic experience providing you had keen keyboard button finger reflexes.
Then the La Russa series was so good that it lead to volume spinoffs, 6 in all, metamorphasizing from a mere 3 1/4 disk arcade program to a colorful CD approximation of the old time game with a team database dating back almost to the turn of the century. How's that for an alternative to those muggy, fall strike nights of global warming?
TLRB may well have been the original sports game to have quality graphics on par with the play action, complete with enough stats to appease numbers nerds. When I eventually tired of the team city concept, I took to segregating ballclubs according to color and/or nationality, thus creating for the first time a one of a kind parity never before seen in anyone's field of dreams.
Despite the political incorrectness, the switch made for more excitement and drama than the big show by a wide margin. For in this bush league of my own, two of the best ethnic or racial Olympic style teams had to resort to a one game playoff to decide the pennant.
Baseball was never this good on the tube or in real life. If it was, there'd be a riot at the end of the game, which was won 12-4 by the...
green, white and red team.
Enter the modern era, where the High Heat games allow the gaming enthusiast to fine tune the gameplay to such an extent that you can actually set the tune file in the program to accurately reflect the pitch speeds across your computer in relative mph.
How's that for a respite from the real deal? Especially when what's supposedly real has been marred by drugs in place of heart and superball stand-ins for the old hard variety.
Unfortunately, however, the perfect baseball PC game is beyond the reach of electronic art companies because they are too busy trying to cater to one of two fan camps: either the data freaks who want BA and ERA to accurately ape reality or short attention span casuals the who want fast action and eye candy.
What do do? Have MLB (regress?) back to the way it used to be before business and money turned the former chess match into a lowbrow circus act, and maybe, just maybe the grand old game on our computers will stand the test of general bad taste, owner disarray and player strikes.
» Hank Festa is a freelance writer who holds the secrets to designing the perfect baseball video game. E-mail him if interested.
Also by Hank Festa
» Buddy's Been Had: Baseball's "Citizen Gain" Must Go
» Layman's Fan Copy: Verbal Steroids For The Sports Media
» A Statistical Proposal For the Best-Ever Debate : Runs & Bases Per Hit Average
» The Straw Who Stirred Drinks: Mr. October's Legacy
» For Ted...: 1918-2002
» Strike Talk: It's Still A Players' Game ... But Not For Long
» MLB Pride: Waxing Poetic
» June Swoon: When Human Loss Makes MLB A Kid's Game Again
» Cramer's DiMaggio Hatchet Job: A Bio Worth Burning
» Looking for Growth ... In All The Right Places
» Get Your Red Sox Here: Weep All About It!
» The Strike Zone Or Your Life: The Bean Ball Debate Exposed
» Seasons In The Sun : Baseball In The 70s
» A Closet GM's Philosophy Of Winning: Stats & Role vs. Heart & Soul
» Gibby's '88 Series Limp Shot: Baseball's Last "Earned Home Run"
» Flamethrower's Epiphany: Confessions Of A Live Arm
» In The Event Of A Strike...: The Time Off Must Be Used to Fix the Game
» More submissions
Copyright © 2002 by Hank Festa. Posted August 18, 2002.
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