The Morning Walk-thru

The season starts now...Spring Training has begun and the traditional slate of non-stories bubble up from Florida and Arizona every day now: Dice-K throws BP, Wood hurts himself and misses 8 hours, Barry Bonds has a funny t-shirt (which actually might be sorta remarkable, who knew he had a sense of humor?). The important thing isn't what happens in Spring Training, it's that Spring Training is happening and with that comes the promise of everything American: watery beer, cheap encased meats and baseball.

But video game companies are ready to let fans get started now. They time the release of their games just early enough so the rosters won't be quite right come Opening Day but who the hell cares? You can play (virtual) baseball while there's still snow on the ground.

This week will see the release of Major League Baseball 2K7 and MLB '07 The Show, but before taking the next step forward in hardball software, let's first take a look back courtesy of Bugs & Cranks writer Brad Bortone, who delivered the first of what is sure to be an interesting series looking at the history of baseball video game.

While Bortone focused on the early history of baseball gaming, and I remembered a handful of games played on my father's Odyssey, I couldn't help but look ahead to the true rise of baseball on the NES. Everyone seems to agree that RBI Baseball was the first true quantum leap forward, but, looking back, I always favored Bases Loaded.

I knew BL was the game for me once I saw that the infielders actually fired the ball over to first rather than using the long-toss lob that made most grounders a judgment call. Sure it didn't have real teams, uniforms, stadiums or players, but it did have video franchises in such remote outposts as Kansas, Hawaii and Omaha.

The fake players went on to become as renowned as many major leaguers for a generation of young fans. Tell me if you recognize these names: Frieda, Fendy, Marcus, Gantos, Patson. Perhaps more telling, those all paled to Jersey's immortal Paste: simply the greatest fictional baseball player ever, beating out such luminaries as Sidd Finch and Roy Hobbs.

In fact, Paste may have been the model for the modern-day slugger. Undeniable talent with a crucial character flaw. While Paste possessed the power to hit mammoth home runs off nearly any pitch, he was also as likely to be tossed before the game became official. His penchant for taking issue with plunkings was legendary and, if you were a savvy manager, you could count on him being tossed before you even had to use your set-up man.

My brother and I played a lot of baseball games from a lot of different sources. Bo Jackson, Tecmo, Griffey Jr., Little League Baseball and even Dusty Diamond's All-Star Softball (play it here), where Diablo hit with a freakin' mace!

Even that wasn't as intimidating as seeing Pace dig in.

We all speak "baseball"...I happened to catch some of NESN's Red Sox spring training coverage and after an interview with Dice-K I started to wonder about the interpreters these teams employ. How did they get this job? What are they paid? Do they realize they're some of the first people to infiltrate the inner baseball circle without any real connection to the game?

This piece from the Sunday New York Times answered many of those questions. For example, the Sox hired a Harvard grad to aide their two Japanese players and the Yankees will spend about $300K this season on their interpreters/media assistants. But the one thing I'm still wondering is: do the players have a say in who gets the job?

The NYT piece points out that these interpreters don't really have a definite job description. They're everything from a personal assistant to a warm-up partner in addition to bridging the language gulf. But if that's the case and you're a player, wouldn't you want some say in who your personal guide through Americana is going to be?

Think about it, every time you order a pizza or go to the grocery store or talk to the pitching coach, some guy is going to be the intermediary. The story calls them "shadows," and if some team dropped $50 million on me, I'd make sure that I got a person I could spend an entire year with. Giving multi-million dollar investments Johnny Ivyleague violates every single thing we've learned about entourage assembly.

Should I ever end up as a pro in Japan, I'm requesting, no demanding, Bobby Valentine. Or Bill Murray. He's gotta know after Lost in Translation.

The Departed does it...there was a lot to love about The Departed: the cast, Boston, the Irish mob, that Dropkick Murphy's song, but I was pulling for it last night at the Academy Awards simply because it'd been six years since we had a Best Picture winner that would appeal to your average meat head sports fan. (Not to say all sports fans are meat heads, certainly not the case, but look at it this way: the Oscars is like the Super Bowl for people who don't care about the Super Bowl.)

The last film to fit that bill was Gladiator in 2000. Look at the winners since then and tell me if your ordinary average guy, the guy you watch football with on Sat./Sun., has these movies in his collection: A Beautiful Mind (too mopey), Chicago (a musical), LOTR (maybe, but it is fantasy and it beat out an actual sports movie), Million Dollar Baby (some sports fans probably got caught up in the hype and saw this...and I'm guessing they never watched it again--too much morality), and Crash (like watching two hours of instant replay challenges).

So enjoy it this morning fellas, it'll probably be another five years before we unwashed masses get another movie that we'd actually watch that wins. "Heavy lies the crown."