A long time ago, in the real world, a group of guys were standing around discussing Major League Baseball when one of them said he didn’t follow the sport. To incredulous stares, he explained that there was no loyalty in the player ranks, and because teams changed personnel so often, and the team chemistry/personality changed so much, he just threw up his hands in despair and stopped following the game.

The writer of this review explained to that gent that loyalty wasn’t to the players, it was to the team, the organization and the city where the team was based. That was coming from a die-hard St. Louis Cards fan whose team (as of Sunday, May 13) was five games under .500 and nine games back in the division standings.

(A fan whose reason had fled his brain and it seems logical that if he wears his Cardinals baseball hat, the right color on the right day, his team will win and start gaining ground. Yes, I know – that is just silly … but it seemed to have worked for a bit there.)

But quite recently, the perception has taken a bit of a hit. Why? Blame it on SCEA’s MLB ’07: The Show.

What are the Cardinals but a collection of legendary players – Dizzy Dean, Bob Gibson, The Wizard of Oz (Ozzie Smith) or Albert Pujols? How many team fans know – off the top of their head – how many pennants their team has won? Or World Series titles? (17 pennants and 10 WS titles for the Cards, who are DEFENDING champs and WILL come back this year.)

But then along came the newest iteration of MLB with its Road to the Show mode. An 18-year-old second baseman is assigned to his beloved Cardinals, has a decent spring training and is inked to a one-year deal worth $33,000 and then reassigned to the Memphis triple-A club. In mid-June, the Cards call him up the Show, and he does what he is asked to do – pinch run here, pinch hit there, play second, play third, play right field. In short, he does whatever his legendary manager asks of him to the best of his abilities. Tony is happy with the youngster and keeps him around. June becomes July, then August and September and the Cards have won the division and enter the playoffs. The rookie is a starter at second now, and a contributor to the club’s success. But come the playoffs, the kid goes on a tear, having a monster playoff run. He is named the NL Playoff MVP. The Cards win the World Series and it all progresses to the off-season.

Ok, now remember, that was a one-year deal, so the kid is a free agent. The offers don’t exactly roll in, but he gets four decent ones. The Cardinals, alas, are at the low end of the totem pole, only offering a 2-year deal worth $137,500 per year. The Angels, the team the Cards beat in the Series, pony up a deal worth $270k per year for four years; San Diego sees that offer and comes to the table with a four-year deal worth $281k per year; and Boston offers a three-year contract of $218,250 per year.

The question becomes this: at what point does loyalty factor in to an organization as opposed to playing for another team and receiving a financial remuneration commiserate with demonstrated ability? Or, in layman’s terms, should the kid just take the money? Would the Cards consider the kid a bargain-basement deal and trade his low salary and serious potential to another team if, in the 2008 season, they felt they could broker a deal that got veteran talent to them for a playoff run?

Thanks MLB for bringing a new perspective to the diamond.

Hey, wait a minute … Ozzie was a Padre for four years … !!! … hmm, perhaps this is an easy decision after all.

While there are many ways to play the game, including rivalry, exhibition, manager, franchise, season and the Road to the Show career mode. The game also has full-on support for online play.

And yes, there are some new features added into the mix – aside from the obvious new rosters – that seem a little hit and miss. Umpires have personalities. Oh no! There goes the theory that only their seeing-eye dogs have all the charm. (Ok, just kidding; it is a job that is not only vital but underappreciated.) The controller also will allow you to target certain baserunners quickly, and the game has a new pitch command system (use the pitches in your repertoire or risk having to relearn to throw them), adaptive pitching intelligence (which seems to mean that if the AI is throwing you fastballs low and on the outside third of the strike zone, and you are crushing them, the chances of seeing one down there gets less and less as the game develops a scouting report on you), and a throwing meter.

You won’t see all of these features if you play at the lowest difficulty level, but crank up the challenge the gameplay options expand.

Some of the anomalies of the game include a camera that will squirrel around while seemingly trying to locate the career player for the next event in that player’s game. Also, you may field the ball and before you even throw it, see the first baseman diving off the bag or sprawled along the ground. The game has already determined you will be making an errant throw to first so nothing you can do will change that.

And speaking of the camera … when baserunning, the camera does not always rotate correctly and you can’t see what is happening with a ball hit to the outfield. The result is you are not sure if you can advance, and should the ball drop, you look rather stupid being forced out at the next base. Conversely, if you presume that the ball was hit into the gap and you try to advance, and it is caught, you look even sillier being doubled up.

The camera is rather lazy, at times, when swinging around to pick up the signal from the third-base coach. And while it would be nice to dance off base and watch to see if the line drive to the outfield falls or is caught, sometimes you can’t quite do that. The game seems to be trying to adhere to the laws of physics and rotating your neck 120 degrees doesn’t quite fall into that frame, but in real baseball, you would swing your body so you could see, rather than merely guess.

And while the game is great at setting up the situations, there is little information offered when you are on base. You can’t glance at the scoreboard to refresh the situational memory, and the coach will not send in a signal to steal, run and hit or anything else. A batter may square around to bunt, but might be bluffing to get the infield to react. If you think there is a bunt coming and take off, and the bat is pulled back, you are likely left high and dry, and are thrown out advancing to the next base.

In one instance, the career player was on second and another baserunner was on first. The pitcher was batting and squared to bunt, but pulled the bat back. The runner on first, though, was taking off with the pitch. No signal from anywhere, so the career runner was not moving much. It almost felt as though a double steal was on, but someone forgot to tell the career player.

The game has a couple of other problems as well. Playing as a career player (second base for the Cards), there is a close play at first and the career player argues the call … rather vehemently … too vehemently … Ok, it was too demonstrative for the sensitive personality of the umpire. The career player is tossed out of the game. Ok, as the game usually then cuts to the next event in the player’s career, the next thing that should have popped up would be the final score and announcing the player of the game. Nope. The game shows control of the next batter in the line-up, a pinch hitter. Surprised, nonetheless a few hacks are taken and the ball is lazily popped up in the infield. The shortstop camps under it, makes the catch and the game crashed to the PS3 desktop. Since the last save was mid July and the incident happened on the final day of July, that was better than a week’s worth of games that were lost.

The SIXAXIS control implementation seems to be hit or miss. It can be used for sliding and hook sliding in particular. In one inning, the hook slide is executed beautifully, but the runner was still tagged out. The next instance, a ball hit to the outfield is bobbled and the batter (controlled player) is trying to leg out a double. The throw comes in, the SIXAXIS controller is jerked to perform a hook slide to the outside of the bag (the same motion as before) and instead of sliding, the runner slows down, stands up and is easy pickings. Of course, this could be that the window to actuate a slide is small and the control commands were issued too late or too early.

While not connecting online, the game launches and searches for an end-user agreement. On the day before the game was available on retail shelves, the game would not launch for a good portion of the day due to a network error. “SportsConnect connect lost” was the message and the game would not launch at all. Once that SportsConnect server came back online, the game launched just fine.

In the graphical department, MLB ’07 is a treat. The players’ faces are hit or miss, but some of the plays are wonderful to watch and the environments (though they give the pretense of being interactive with dust flying up, but you won’t see footprints in the dirt) are lush. The game plays out in 720p in high definition and looked great on a 42-inch Sony Bravia television.

As for the commentary – that is handled by Matt Vasgersian, Dave Campbell and Rex Hudler. Vasgersian seems to have some new dialogue, as does Hudler, but Campbell doesn't really seem to offer much that is new from previous years.

MLB ’07: The Show is still, in spite of a few errors, nine innings of fun baseball action. The online portion promises to be robust with leagues and tournaments, and the career elements are very entertaining. If viewed without wearing the hat of a former newspaper sports editor, and shucking aside the baseball purist attitude, MLB ’07 is a solid liner to the gap in right center. Though not quite home run distance, it does try to stretch that sure double into a triple.

Gameplay: 8.2
The controls, for the most part, are easy to use. Some of the SIXAXIS elements feel a little hit or miss and you will have to make certain contact with the buttons or that hack at a fastball right down the pipe may turn into a checked swing.

Graphics: 8.6
Rendered out is 720p, MLB ’07 is a visual treat. The camera can be a bit of a pain, and the interface may suffer from the scenario of 'the more that is offered, the more that is wanted' in terms of information supplied.

Sound: 8.0
Some of the commentary is just a rehash from previous years. Still the broadcast style presentation really adds to the experience.

Difficulty: Medium/Hard
The cliché is ‘easy to learn, difficult to master.’ That is true here in regards to the control scheme.

Concept: 8.0
The new elements really bolster the depth of the experience. Still, there are a few items that could be improved upon – especially in the single-player career mode.

Multiplayer: N/A
A full array of online features will be offered and should provide a very entertaining experience. Unfortunately, this aspect could not be tested at the time of the review.

Overall: 8.4
Sure, there are some frustrations in this game, but it is still a pretty good representation of the game of baseball. The game looks great, sounds good and plays well. The components are all in place to make a pennant run for the top baseball title in ’07.