Nobody seems to care about baseball right now. There's just too much going on. Foreigners have been kicking a ball around and three exceptionally talented basketball players decided to have an extended slumber party in South Beach and dance and pose awkwardly in front of smoke and lasers.

You can't blame people for their apathy though. The baseball season is a slog of a journey through months and months of occasionally meaningless marathon games.

With the All-Star game approaching the spotlight will fall once again, if only briefly, on the national pastime. We'll all tune in this week and pretend the Home Run Derby isn't an incessantly repetitive affair and then to the big game itself, a disjointed, artificially pumped-up exhibition where our favorite players are only on the field for an inning or two.

It's about this time of the year where I fire up my baseball franchise on my game and try and get my interest back. The baseball games we've got right now go a long way in trying to replicate the sport, but they do come up short on occasion. What I need in future endeavors is a closer eye on detail and development and an effort in increasing gamers' enjoyment. While I am not a game designer, or even a professional baseball player in my own right, I do have some suggestions on where we can go from here.

1. Let's Clear Up Some Screen Space

Am I the only one who's tired of playing a game where it seems like I'm walking around a rave as opposed to a ball field? We've gotten to an embarrassing point of excess in recent years where every inch of the screen is covered in one diagram or hint or direction or another.

I want a clean space where I can visualize myself being on the field. After all, when Ubaldo Jiminez gets on the mound and prepares to embarrass outmatched batters, is his vision filled with directions on how to throw a two-seamer or a slurve? Which brings me to my next point -

2. For the Love of All that is Good, Can We Please Simplify Controls?

Here's an interesting thought: for a long, long time now we've been playing baseball on gaming consoles. I remember spending hours beating the hell out of my younger cousin on the pitiful Atari game Baseball. The Atari, amazingly had one button. One! Imagine that!

Flash forward twenty years and I'm playing season after season on World Series Baseball 2004. My Cubs finally win a World Series and I land an awesome girlfriend in the same year. Flash forward a bit more and we're fighting because I can't stop playing the game and/or thinking about an upcoming series with the lowly Pirates. And the controls? Surprisingly simple.

Last night I played a game on MLB 2K10. One game. And do you know why? Because it is impossible to do anything effectively on that game without at least a Master's degree in engineering. Try and steal a base on that game. I dare you.

Additionally, fielding is awful in every regard. There's no spontaneity involved anymore. Either your fielder is on rails and makes great plays automatically or you're giving up multiple triples a game because you're missing routine fly balls.

There has to be some kind of improvement here. When I was eight years old I played the hell out of a game called Baseball Stars and the fielding on there was intuitive and easy. Same for Ken Griffey Jr. Baseball or the aforementioned World Series game.

Shouldn't we be evolving, or was Darwin just some bearded liar?

3. Make Me Care About the League

For all those dedicated gamers out there, I have a question: do you pay that close of attention to the fictional leagues you play in? I mean, you look at stats and standings, but are you drawn into the universe?

I'm not, at all. Sure, I get some headlines here and there, but I couldn't really care less about what's going on outside of my own team. This takes me out of the game and diminishes the experience in a huge way. And, theoretically, I'm the president of a ball team in that universe and should care deeply.

My suggestion: In real life GMs talk to other organizations and carry on relationships. Let's go that route. Let's have a little bit more interaction within our leagues. Give us a cell phone option where we can call other GMs or, and I like this idea quite a bit, maybe we can talk to the press and bring back an automated news service where team chemistry and momentum can be affected. NCAA Football 11 is radicalizing the idea of game write-ups and dynasty integration, maybe baseball, a sport steeped in storylines, could learn something?

4. Pump a Little Blood into Those Avatars

I'll be honest: it takes a hell of a lot of imagination for me to see my digital players as real people. They are, for all extents and purposes, robots. They don't really react to things, they don't have even the most basic of emotions, they are slaves of sort to their animations.

Let's get some players riled up. Let's see them get pissed off at a called strike and tossed out. Let's have tirades. Let's have players who are so unhappy with their team that they go to the press and start spreading cancer through an organization.

What I'm saying is, make us deal not only with the skilled part of the sport, or the day to day operations, but with the personnel aspects that frustrate GMs and managers everywhere. I hate to say it, but I want to have a Milton Bradley on my hands. Too many times I'm complacent in my moves and hesitant. After all, Virtual Milton Bradley hits pretty well and keeps his mouth shut. Maybe I should have to consider the problems he brings before I write up that contract?