It's still a few months until Spring Training, but MLB 2001 is in stores now to try and relieve you from taking out that glove that's hiding in your closet. The graphics, however, are a little shaky at times. Players up to bat look great with the player models following the body shape and size. But the players out in the field are a completely different story. The pixels are large, making each fielder look blocky and unimpressive. I will say that the animations involved on each play flow like water, and really work well with the game, considering that jumping, diving, swinging and sliding are necessary parts to any baseball game. New stadiums have been added to mix, including Safeco Field, PacBell Park, and Comerica Park. At times, the different camera angles really make you feel like you're sitting in the bleachers, but other times the crowds look like cheap backgrounds.

The audio is just as iffy. The crowd sounds good, and the crack of the bat is right on. The background and ballpark music are just as good, which took me back to when I was a kid at my first Minnesota Twins game. What got me turned off from the audio was the commentating, brought to you by Vin Scully and Dave Campbell. It honestly sounds pieced together. They keep up with the game all right, but there is no banter, and it sounds too mechanical. Even for PlayStation.

When you're playing any sports game, baseball especially, it really comes down to whether the game flows or not. Well, with Total Control Batting and Fielding, I found MLB 2001's gameplay to be very impressive. If you enjoy manually fielding, then you should enjoy this game. There are a few different modes to play with, including Exhibition, Season, Franchise, Spring Training and Home Run Derby. With Exhibition, play a regular game against a friend or the computer. Home Run Derby is just as obvious, hit as many out as you can. The Season mode allows you to be the GM, making trades and signing free agents, and you can even check out the farm system. With the Franchise Mode, you are only able to sign and release free agents, but with each win, your team's performance will improve. Finally, Spring Training is designated for created players to make the final roster of a professional team.

With all those modes, you won't get bored. But if you're like me, you'll get upset that the team rosters are from 1999! In fact, the statistics and rosters are from '99. Not even 2000. I really don't understand the point of making a game that is basically a year-and-a-half old. I would rather wait the few months for spring training to get over with, and then have the actual rosters and statistics.

The difficulty in MLB 2001 is all about the features that are on or off including Auto Fielding, Sliding, number of Innings, Errors, Injuries, Wind, etc. Also, there are different levels involving batting and the game itself. The computer's AI was also revamped with the help of Baseball stars' Tony Gwynn, Trevor Hoffman and coach Davey Johnson.

The loading time for MLB 2001 will take very little of your day away, and the memory card leaves plenty of room after saving information. The controller configuration isn't difficult to learn either, especially if you have experience in past video baseball games. The game doesn't run slow, but I found that if you swing exceptionally late, the umpire will already make the call of Ball or Strike, regardless if you swung or not.

PS2: The only difference I found was that by turning on the Fast option, the loading time took nothing at all for MLB 2001.

As I said earlier, MLB 2001 plays well, but basically came out way too early, or really, really late.