MLB 07: The Show goes a long way to convincing even the most rabid baseball fan that they are taking part in a major league sport. The stadiums are detailed, and the player models are well made, crisp looking, and display more than enough unique animations and signature moves.

As often happens when a game system is in the last stages of consumer relevance, the complexities of MLB 07: The Show sometimes overwhelm even the redoubtable PS2 processors. This is especially noticeable when switching from the hitter camera to the fielding view, which makes it difficult to react correctly to a sharply hit grounder. The overall framerate chugs a bit, too. Sad, really, since it’s usually possible to dial down various aspects of any game to make it run more aggressively on legacy hardware.

One of the areas where MLB 07: The Show truly shines (like the sun off a polished batting helmet) is its voiceovers and other game related sounds. San Diego Padres' announcer, Matt Vasgersian, calls play-by-play. Dave Campbell and Rex Hudler (who, in real life are about as different as chalk and cheese) provide color commentary. The overall quality of the exchanges is exemplary, as well as the rapidity with which the dialogue is delivered. Other foley work, like crowd noises and specific shouts and jeers, are more than competent. Nice job, sound designers and programmers (an underappreciated bunch).

The gameplay within MLB 07: The Show is extremely deep. In fact, it almost redefines baseball because the developers are really going all out to find fun things for players to do when they’ve finished playing a few games (or even a few seasons).

In a nutshell, it is possible to play a quick game, either solo or with a friend, take over the dugout as the manager of your team, become a stat geek against your friend in Rivalry Mode, go online to play up to 30 other people in online play, play through an entire career (shouldn’t you be doing your homework?), run the franchise as its General Manager, or even take part in mini-games like Home Run Derby and King of the Diamond.

Even active players would agree that’s more than even they can handle.

But the game’s Career Mode, called the Road to the Show, is where it’s at in MLB 07: The Show. It is literally as fulfilling as taking Randy Johnson deep with the bases loaded. You can play the game as any position player, but in this case, you’re trying to keep up with the game within the game, that is, the situational strategies mandated by your manager and the other coaches. For example, you might need to move a runner on second to third by hitting to the right side of the infield … in effect sacrificing without bunting. Or the boss might call for the sacrifice fly or even for you to lay down a suicide squeeze to plate the fateful runner. In this mode you move up by pleasing the manager, but failure is equally absolute -- you drop like a stone and wind up cleaning up everyone else's old chaws and spent sunflower seeds after the game (a slight exaggeration, I admit, but you get the picture). How does it feel to be riding the pine with the Toledo Mudhens … eh, slugger?

MLB 07: The Show even has depth as an online experience. Leagues can include up to 30 separate teams and such teams can play all the way through a season and beyond, into the playoffs. And in order to help people playing online and without any physical contact, the game has something called the Online Player Card, a gizmo that helps players to measure whether the opposition, (aka: the person on the other side of the screen), is a burly Kirk Gibson type, a spindly rabbit like Steve Finley, or a complete goof like John Kruk. The Online Player Card shows you such things as whether an opposing player likes to disconnect if he falls behind by a number of runs late in the game, or what difficulty rating they like to play with. Good to know such stuff before you say yes to a game!

Like its many predecessors, MLB 07: The Show allows players to select a game mode that matches what they consider to be their overall ability to play the game (yeah, I’m callin’ you out, rookie!!!). But it is really the game within the game that determines how well or badly anyone will play this game. MLB 07: The Show has strayed away from the olden days when it was merely possible to gauge the speed of the pitcher’s throws and hit the swing button at the right time.

Now it is much more like an actual game of baseball. The better you recognize what the pitcher is likely to throw you, the better you will do if you guess correctly and hit that pitch. The better you can figure out what leeway the umpire is going to give you with your borderline strikes, the better able you’ll be to paint the black portions of the plate with your fastballs, sinkers, and sliders.

So, if you’re of the old "grip it and rip it" variety, you’re probably better off trying to find an arcade with an old World Series: The Season sprite-based baseball game. Aaah, those were the days.

Because last year’s Zone Control Batting system scored so strongly, this year’s MLB 07: The Show puts the focus squarely on the pitcher. A two part system targets the pitcher; the first part is the Pitch Command System, the second is the Adaptive Pitching Intelligence. The Pitch Command System places each pitcher’s pitches on the face buttons in order from strongest to weakest, and it also allows the player to gauge the pitcher’s confidence level from pitch to pitch as the pitch is leaving his hand. Pound the plate with more strikes and watch the pitcher’s confidence meter get stronger. How does this help? The confident pitcher’s fastball will travel faster than Pete Rose betting on the Reds while his curve will break with more drama than the finale of American Idol.

The second part of the improved pitch mechanics is called Adaptive Pitching Intelligence. During the game, the catcher will read the situation and will suggest a pitch that might help you get ahead in the count or close out a batter with a key strike. The catcher gives you the pitch and a location where you should try to throw it. Of course, you can waive his decision and choose another pitch, but the money is on establishing that good pitcher/catcher relationship, taking the receiver’s guidance, and delivering the proper pitch where he is expecting it.

Last, but certainly not least, MLB 07: The Show includes into the mix someone who most fans would actually never have to see: the Umpire. Call ‘em umps, men in blue, or simply blue, the umpires actually have a big part in determining how the game is played and this game takes advantage of that. While they used to be as animated as a big blue block of wood, the new umps have personalities as distinctive as the way they rule the strike zone. In actuality, there are three types of umps. The lenient ump has a strike zone as big as Penelope Cruz’s smile, but you’ll find it’s easier to sneak a steak past a pit bull than to get a strike call from the tough guy.

While the changing of the guard is rarely easy on those left out of it, the developers of the PS2 port of MLB 07: The Show have only to look at a rating of E (for Everyone) and an installed base of 70 gazillion PS2 units to recognize this game’s worth. And like a group of major league veterans, they didn’t bobble the ball when it came their way.