hacklog

It is foolish and childish, on the face of it, to affiliate ourselves with anything so insignificant and patently contrived and commercially exploitive as a professional sports team, and the amused superiority and icy scorn that the non-fan directs at the sports nut (I know this look — I know it by heart) is understandable and almost unanswerable. Almost. What is left out of this calculation, it seems to me, is the business of caring — caring deeply and passionately, really caring — which is a capacity or an emotion that has almost gone out of our lives. And so it seems possible that we have come to a time when it no longer matters so much what the caring is about, how frail or foolish is the object of that concern, as long as the feeling itself can be saved. Naivete — the infantile and ignoble joy that sends a grown man or woman to dancing and shouting with joy in the middle of the night over the haphazardous flight of a distant ball — seems a small price to pay for such a gift.

Go sharks.

Ee-by-gum they’ve gone and done it again. The chaps at Stick Sports immediately jump to the front of the pack with their own baseball offering. The game play isn’t quite as sophisticated as this but it’s a much more complete game. Sign up for a (free) account and you can even create your own team with all your lil’ friends. Fab.

This one is pretty much the best I’ve come across as far as game play and graphics go. The hitting is pretty good but the base running and opponent’s fielding is annoyingly unrealistic. And your little base running guys are morons. Also, there’s no pitching. Wish they’d make a full game of it.

This one is only full game, arcade style baseball game I’ve found with both batting and pitching. On the downside it’s very hard to score runs and very easy to stop your opponent scoring. The only score when I played came from weird little bonus games in between innings. The Japanese adverts are fun though.

Pinch Hitter 2. Fun. Hitting only, cartoon style graphics. Still, pretty addictive. Can’t finish it. Tricky.

Bullpen Blast. Great pitching action. Normally I don’t like games where you control the action with mouse movement but this one is pretty good. Again, I wish they’d make a full game of it.

Strategy only. Fun for a while but gets boring and tends to freeze up.