Introduction and MVP Baseball Nostalgia - thelems's Blog

thelems's Blog

Introduction and MVP Baseball Nostalgia

Posted on July 17, 2009 at 12:17 AM.

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So you're probably wondering who I am. Realistically, you probably aren't. But you are probably wondering if I have anything interesting to say about any sports video games. Maybe I do, maybe I don't, and what's it to you?

Well, that�s a bad start. Let's reset. Break.

Hey, my name's Joe. I like sports and video games and I�m assuming you do too. I wish you were a chick because we'd already be off to a great start. Wanna get a beer and watch the game? Perfect.

A little about me (bare with it): I used to write reviews for the late 90s, early 2000s FIFA series games, and yeah, I know I've just lost the interest of about 99% of anyone who might be reading this but don't worry! I've changed my ways. First, FIFA sucks and Pro Evolution Soccer and Championship Manager (now Football Manager) are still somehow the dominate kings of soccer gaming--I don't care what any EA *** kisser has to say (Sure I'll kiss EAs ***, just not for their soccer series) because seriously, eight years later the game still lags far behind any other in the EA catalogue. And yeah, I�ve now lost about 99.9% of the potential readers, but for that .1 percent still with me, thanks, and you deserve to read the rest. And it goes something like this:

...but since then the world has changed and so have I. First of all, porn moved from an average two-hour download from Limewire to hassle free online streaming. A simply amazing feat and the human race is far better off for it. But I also bought MVP Baseball 2003 one early spring morning and my gaming perspective has never been the same.

I remember the summer of 2003 distinctly. Bees buzzing, birds singing, stars perfectly aligned (and all that other crap your mind loves to make up with positive memories). Truthfully, the summer was decent, maybe a bit too humid to be considered a "perfect summer," but the Twins did have a good year and the Wild made it to the Western Conference finals in June. All good things, but what makes me remember that summer, what really makes it the summer of 2003 was MVP Baseball 2003 (the one with Miguel Tejada and Randy Johnson on the front).

All you have to do is bring up the lame soundtrack and you'll pull me back. Hell, I picked up Revis' "Caught In The Rain" for 5 bucks at Target that summer. I can name another five songs I have from the title but I won't, because it would be embarrassing (OK Go, Revis, All American Rejects, Taproot, Sum 41, Soundtrack Of Our Lives...--ah man).

I should've known that this title would've been engrained in my mind many years later. Even the story of purchasing it brings me back to a simpler time in suburban Minnesota. It was May 8th and the Minnesota Wild had just come back to defeat the Vancouver Canucks in Game 7 of the Western Conference semi-finals. This meant at 11 pm CST, the line started to form outside of the Xcel Energy Center in Saint Paul for the small batch of Western Conference Finals tickets against the Anaheim Ducks. Needless to say, I was there...all night.

Game 7 was on a Thursday night so it was easy to take the next Friday off. After landing my Western Conference final tickets at 7 am I had some time to kill, so a friend and I decided to drive over the nearest Best Buy to drop down some dough on a new obsession. I was so stoked on this new game because as soon as I got home I slept for almost 24 hours. What I didn't know at the time was that months later this game would keep me up for three days straight.

And weeks later, the flowers bloomed and the Boys of Summer came out to play. My Playstation 2 followed me on a road trip to a hotel in Washington DC to a family friend's house in Virginia Beach, Virginia. Each night I kept on playing. At 2 am, after returning home each night of a three game AAA series between the Norfolk Tide and the Buffalo Bison, after everyone had gone to sleep, I kept on playing--catching up on the games I had missed while driving to the East Coast. This game was so cool.

By mid-season with the Minnesota Twins, Eric Milton was 13-1, and Torii Hunter led the bigs in home runs. We were 3 games ahead in the AL Central (Radke inexplicably sucked), which was a far cry from reality but who cared? Reality in 2003 meant that MVP cover boy Jermaine Dye was injured, Barry Zito's 12-6 curve floated to the plate like soggy marshmallows and Esteban Loaiza (who?) was the clutch early season pick and yeah, okay, Milton was no Johan Santana (Milton was to be traded to the Phillies the following year).

But all the real statistics didn't matter. In the MVP Baseball world, Milton was the 1.8 ERA, 200+ K, and a 21-2 pitcher by seasons end. Torii Hunter had over 50 HRs and Jacque Jones lead the league with RBIs. This legendary season lasted until October, when the real team was no longer with me (the Twins bowed out to the Yankees in the Divisional Series that year). And by the time I lost to the Saint Louis Cardinals in the sixth game of the World Series, it didn�t matter.

Yeah, I spent five months and lost in the sixth game of a video game World Series and let it happen.

That was the point. The game had followed me wherever I went and felt just as real as the real thing and I was okay letting success follow failure. I don�t think I read one review of the game that year. I suspect it received critical reviews based on comparison to the Triple Play series, but if you couldn�t tell, I didn�t care about the new features. Having only played Triple Play 2000 on a PS, new features didn't matter to me. What mattered was the experience. The game was made so seamlessly that it was a far cry from any other game, baseball or otherwise, I�d ever played. It played like the real deal.

Was it the circumstances around the game or was it the game itself? I don�t know. But what I know for sure is that it was the creators and developers of the game made something that was at first playable, and secondly created outcomes realistically plausible without the glitches and flaws that still occasional occur in games today. That's what makes a game. Or maybe that season I just got lucky.

Six years later, I�m still looking for the next MVP.

Do you have a game experience like this? I want to know what your best sports gaming experience is. Were you wooed for a season by the voice of Marv Albert in NFL Quarterback Club 99? Nostalgic for the Taylorisms of NHL 02? Carry the Cubs past heartbreak in 2003? Post it.

Comments

# 1 stlstudios189 @ Jul 17

Madden 92 I was 12 years old and played that game so many times. My brother and I would do "seasons" together where would keep track of our stats on paper and make up our own 16 game schedules. still my favorite to this day.