
I like a no-nonsense baseball game. There’s something considerably less intimidating about a game where the players, teams and stats are removed and like Cal Ripken is the only actual player and all of the teams just have fruity logos and are just the name of a city. Baltimore. Maybe the Baltimore Baltimores? You don’t have to worry about things like which team is great and which one is bad (what game other than sports games gives you the option of playing a bunch of people that suck out loud? How do bad teams feel about playing videogame versions of themselves? They probably use the make-a-player features to create cooler versions of themselves and give them names like Muscle because there’s a 6 character limit and they really wanted Muscles but really what can you do?)
So I picked Baltimore mostly because I want to watch The Wire again but the logo is decidedly not very evocative of the taxonomy of a city in decay.

So it was time to step up to the plate. The first batter? Legendary Baltimore player Jack Nimble.

There’s something soothing about the plain-green playing field, the bare baseline playing over the action and occasional slowdown whenever anything happens.

Also any time Cal Ripken does anything the game gets really excited and tells you how awesome it was.

15 to 2 in the 3rd inning. I still suck at baseball.