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| Source // PlayStation |
We've all got our favourite sports, but baseball is never one of them. How could it be? It's an absolute bore. It's so boring that rather than playing MLB 09: The Show, I instead want to try and work out at what point a ball sport becomes interesting, and whether the size of the ball has anything to say about it.
Football is great, Golf sucks. Basketball is cool, Tennis absolutely isn't. Snooker, somehow, is better than Rugby, but American Football is probably better than Snooker.
While I mull that over, let's whizz through a game of MLB 09.
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| Source // PlayStation |
Frustrations
Not really having a clue where to begin with MLB 09 on account of it not being an EA Sports title, I opted for a quick game of baseball, which is an oxymoron of some sort, surely? This was a mistake, as I didn't have a clue what the controls were, even with the tooltips on.
The only team I know of are the Red Sox, and luckily they were easy to find on the list. From here on in, we are blind. I don't even know how to swing the damn bat, something which costs me a strike before I can even vaguely remember the general rules of baseball.
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| Source // PlayStation |
Screenshots of baseball players batting baseballs don't seem to exist on the Internet. I think, deep down, everyone knows that baseball is insufferably dull, and so they need to resort to pictures of players sliding into bases and kicking up a load of dust.
Somehow, I had a guy on first base. He got hit by the ball, which marked the first time any part of my players or their equipment made contact with an incoming ball (I had already lost one guy not knowing how to swing the bat).
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| Source // PlayStation |
And then I was given a tooltip on how to dodge with runners.
One man struck out, one runner out, my third man manages to hit a foul ball and that was the highlight of his time at the plate. We then swapped and it was my turn to throw some balls.
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| Source // PlayStation |
No screenshots of that, either. Still too dull. You can aim where in the box you want to try and hit, but after that is a swing-o-meter where you've got to press X to start it charging, press X to stop it charging at the power you want, press X again to throw it... Long story short, I wasn't successful at throwing the ball either and decided to quit in frustration.
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| Source // PlayStation |
After ten minutes (and that's being generous) the Phillies had won on account of the Red Sox pressing the Eject button on the PlayStation 3.
Final Word
I knew I was never going to have a good time with MLB 09, but I was hoping for at least having an introduction to the sport for us newcomers. I'm sure there is one, somewhere in the practice mode, but no amount of HUD elements in-game will help you out, especially if they're written in baseball-speak and don't stay in view long enough for you to even work out what they mean.
On top of that, of course, you've got the problem of even knowing how to play the sport itself. I know more about baseball than I do about ice hockey, but what I know doesn't include the all-important numbers that relate to how well you're doing.
This isn't a quick game in the park, this is a simulation. You don't play MLB 09 to get your fix of walloping a bat at a ball and seeing it fly through the air, you play it because, like FIFA, NFL, NHL, and so on, it's the dominant video game adaptation of the sport you presumably thoroughly enjoy and understand, and you can't really go anywhere else.
If I were to be American, this might be an obvious game to get stuck into, but like ice hockey, round this neck of the woods, we just don't do baseball. It's not in my DNA to be excited about baseball.
Again, you'll know whether you want to play MLB 09: The Show, but I want to be shown the exit door.
Fun Facts
The longest time I've spent watching something in a baseball stadium was when Liverpool FC went on an American tour and played in one. Thankfully, I was thousands of miles away from the actual venue. As for MLB 09, it features pitch analysis, allowing players to analyse pitches in-game. Fascinating.
MLB 09: The Show, developed by San Diego Studio, first released in 2009.
Version played: PlayStation 3, 2009.