I imagine Frank Wren drinks Maalox by the gallon these days. For those not in the know, he's the general manager of your Atlanta Braves, a team whose glory days seem to be behind them lately. But I'll be the first to tell you that his job is not an easy one. And I speak from experience. Well, sort of.
Lately, I've been sampling a terrific new baseball game on my Macintosh laptop (also available for PC) entitled "Out-of-the-Park Baseball 9." And every bit of the exhiliration experienced when a baseball leaves the yard exists in this graphically minimal game.
In OOTP9, you take the reigns of a baseball team, either a classic, current, or fictional one. You handle as much, or as little, as you like. You can sit in the dugout and tell your hitters when to take a pitch or when to swing away. Runners can be told when to steal, when to hit-and-run, or when to run-and-hit. You can bring your infielders in for a play at the plate, and cheat your outfielders to compensate for a batter's strength to a particular part of the yard.
Or you can let a field manager handle all of this and just run the front office. You set ticket prices, negotiate contracts, manipulate the disabled lists, and field and initiate trade proposals. Each year, the team ownership lets you know what their expectations are for the season, and yes, you CAN be fired!
The graphics in the game are extremely primitive, but that really doesn't matter. If you see baseball as the chess game that it can be, you'll love the engine in this game and won't be looking to swing the bat like Ryan Howard. It's the players that play, so no manual dexterity or finesse with a joystick are required. And an extremely active OOTP fan community offers second party downloads, such as player images, so that their faces appear on the game board.
And players are available from the late 1870s until present-day. Do you think YOU can get the 2008 Braves to the playoffs? Here's your chance to swing for the fences, and put your moxy where your mouth is. Good luck!
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The Business End of Baseball ...
