MLB Showdown: The greatest card game ever played by not that many people

In light of Bill Simmons' recent article about the National Sports Collectors Convention, I thought I'd share what I feel is one of the most underrated games of all time, and it's not a video game.

It's MLB Showdown and it's actually better than a lot of video games. It combines the nostalgia of collecting baseball cards with the sim-playing ability of Strat-o-matic.

Lost in the shuffle of the seemingly hundreds of different companies manufacturing baseball cards these days, Wizards of the Coast released versions of the baseball card game from 2000-2005.

Wizards of the Coast is the same company that gave us Pokemon cards and maybe gets a bad rap from the sports gamer because of that. Also, the game was being made in an era where kids played video games mostly and probably hadn't heard of Showdown either.

I don't get it though, when did collecting baseball cards become something that wasn't cool anymore?

I remember starting at a young age and then from third to fifth grade a lot of the boys in school really got into it too.

It was awesome.

You came to school everyday with your cards in your backup and during breaks put your best on display and traded with your buddies. What could be better?

Then suddenly kids started to separate into classes and cool kids immediately stopped collecting.

I hate those kids.

These are also the same kids that will begin to think playing poker is cool just because you can gamble on it. Well, you can gamble on anything and sports happens to be the best thing in the world to gamble on.

If you're going to be sitting at a table with your friends holding cards while you bet money based on your strategy, why not have baseball players on the cards instead of stupid hearts and spades?

The problem was that the only kids who collected, played sports, and the cool kids usually were those who played sports. That meant that if no cool kids were collecting, I was left as one of very few who still found collecting to be dear to my heart.

So it wasn't until sixth grade that MLB Showdown came around and it was a huge hit for me. I got to combine collecting cool-looking baseball cards with a fun and easy to play game that got you stats and a great simulation. I couldn't stop singing the song, "Heaven Must Be Like This."

But I was also quoting a line from the Matrix at the time: "Not like dis, not like dis." Because I couldn't get anyone else to open up and stop acting like this wasn't the coolest thing ever and play with me.

Eventually I would convince three others to take part in this magical experience, but they lost interest eventually.

After going solo for the next few years, creating fantasy leagues and rolling the dice while playing games against myself, it would take until now, 2009, for me to try to ressurect the game with my roommate: one Koby Garick or Gasick, whichever you prefer.

And it worked. Obviously he liked it because it is sick and there is no reason not to. Plus, he's not fronting like so many others in this world.

After a few (or 25) purchases from eBay, I've done my best to complete most of the sets from the six years of MLB Showdown, at least the best cards.

Now I am able to sit down after a long day of working at the campus library, and enjoy a nice relaxing game of Showdown while frantically taking down all of the stats.

I guess now's a good time to explain the game a little more.

There are two types of cards: pitchers and hitters. Each pitcher has a control number and each hitter an on-base number. Each player also has a chart with what outcomes for each roll.

As the game goes, the pitcher will roll a 20-sided die and add their control number. If that total is higher than the hitter's on-base number, then the pitcher has the advantage. If it is lower then the batter does.

Next the hitter rolls the die and then looks on the player with the advantage's chart to see the outcome.

And that's really all there is to it. There are a lot of advanced rules as well which can be found if you search on Google.

This is a game worth checking out. If you are leavig the stage where people still pretend to be cooler than others and you like collecting baseball cards and playing simulation baseball games then this is for you.


Thank you my name is Andrew.

Best Online and Tourney Video Game

Over the past 10 years sports video games have more and more been made for online play and competition. Every Madden or NCAA or NBA Live has a new feature that is geared toward the online player.

I have a PS3 and the online experience is nothing like offline or even XBOX 360 so I really don't get out there too much.

I do however take part in many tournaments amongst my friends, usually with NBA 2K or College Hoops 2K.

This past weekend my friend Andrew Espidol was visiting in Orlando because he had made it past the qualifying tournament for the game Fight Night Round 4. I have to say, this is by far the best game out there to be played online or against another person in general.

It was a single-elimination, 24-man tournament to be played inside a bigger than normal Gamestop with HD TV's everywhere. There were always two fights going on at a time and they could be seen on multiple TV's at once.

I almost felt like I was at a real fight. Nearly every competitor showed up with a posse that did nothing but shout at weird encouraging words as if their friends were actually in a fight themselves.

The areas where Fight Night succeeds and other video games fail all stem from the control the user has over the outcome. It is by far the most control over any other video game I have seen. In my opinion, this is the most important thing for a sports video game to succeed.

You couldn't really take advantage of many glitches in the game or get lucky at any random point. If you were good, it showed. If you knew boxing, it showed. If you were Asian and were just born with crazy video game skills, it showed.

My friend Espidol emodied all of the above to form the perfect Fight Night player. There was one problem.

Nerves.

The competition and large room filled with over 60 people got to him and he almost looked like he was going to throw up at one point. Still, the competition was not that great, at least according to him. He was still confident he could take anyone in the room.

Already set on the boxer he was going to use, Ali (don't know if you've heard of him), he felt he had the advantage over anyone in the room.

Unlike real boxing, these fights were restricted to a six-round maximum and Espidol was confident he could outscore anyone.

The most common fighter being chosen before Espidol would hold the sticks had to be George Foreman and then Ali and Mike Tyson.

As it would have it, Espidol faced off against a gamer who actually had a black eye himself, immediately reinforcing the nerves for Espidol.

Espidol's competition chose Foreman and Espidol stuck with Ali.

Once the fight started Espidol was immediately on the defensive in the fact that he was trying to figure out his opponent's strategy before making his move.

It would cost him.

While I kept yelling at him "Rope-a-dope," Espidol would lost the first round and then badly lose the second as he was knocked down twice before barely getting up the second time.

It wasn't looking good but it also was not over. Espidol, being the more skilled of the two, began making his move. Knockdowns would be hard to come by as Foreman's size and durability kept him afoot with Espidol never being able to land the one big punch he needed.

Espidol took the next three rounds but he wasted a lot of energy in those rounds and one small slip-up early in the sixth and final round would cost him his life in the tourney.

All of this detail I have just gone into is why this game is so great. You don't get that kind of atmosphere combined with realism in any other sports title.

With the football games you get cheesy playcalling and there's 11 players on the field so obviously the user's impact on the outcome isn't near that of Fight Night.

In basketball it's all dunks, blocks, and crossovers, enough said.

I guess baseball's just not that popular because I could see a game like the show working fine in tournament style play.

The other one-on-one sports like golf and tennis just are not that popular either.

That is why I crown Fight Night as the best online and competition based sports game around today.

This doesn't mean I am going to buy it because I'm terrible at it and usually when I am terrible at a game I end up paying double because I break at least one controller.

So to wrap up, Espidol didn't end up winning the tournament and flying out to Vegas for the championships but we're better for it. It was an awesome experience and something all other sports titles need to take a look at and a page from.


Thank you, my name is Andrew.

The Initial Entry: NCAA Football 10 Review

Hey everyone I am Andrew Kennedy, senior majoring in journalism at UCF. The idea for this blog is mainly taken from "The Sports Guy" Bill Simmons over at ESPN. I love sports too but there ca't be two Sports Guys so i decided to incorporate my other love, vido games.

Every sports video game season begins the release with one video game and one only: NCAA Football. Since 2003 this has probably been the best football game title since it is the game I have played the most.

After turning out crap the last two years NCAA 10 is pretty decent this year so I'll start with a late review (which I feel are the truest reviews because no one can tell how good a game is in just a few days) followed by a rundown of what to expect with the rest of this blog.

NCAA 10 has basically taken what was the most effective parts of Madden 09 and NCAA 09 and combined them into one game creating, not a perfect game, but a very playable game for many seasons if dynasties are your think, and they're mine.

The "game-killer" from NCAA 09 was the speed, that's no secret. Eventually if you didn't like playing Florida online anymore, dynasty mode was not about to save the game either. Once you started reeling in the big recruits or just trying to get fast guys, the game was way too easy even on Heisman level. For me, I took UCF to an undefeated national title in just my seventh season followed by another in my eighth.

Winning titles too soon kills a dynasty faster than ripping the game out of your PS2 and smashing it against the wall, which I've done.

NCAA 10 fixes the speed problem and gives the game a feel much like Madden 09. It's better than Madden 09 too though in a way that EA decided was the only way to get realistic results, at least when playing the CPU.

All defenders in NCAA 10, with the right sliders, are idiots when reacting to the run. You know what, it has to be this way. It is very possible to start getting realistic results even while playing on All-American this year, which was impossible last year.

No one reacts to a running play unless they are matched up with the running back or are blitzing until the back crosses the line of scrimmage. If they did, then the CPU running game would be exactly like it was in Madden 09, which was like watching Hawaii try and run against USC.

The fix for the realistic NCAA 10 gamer is to control a safety (if not you'll get beat around the corners way too much), and start preparing your Thorpe award acceptance speech right after you decide which safety you'll be controlling, because you're going to have to make at least 150 tackles a season to keep the CPU running game under wrap.

So there you go, one quarter of this game is not perfectly fine, but fine and not a game-killer. The other three quarters, as you may have guessed, are the human running and passing game and CPU passing game.

Robo-QB, which dominated both football games last year, seems to be gone for the most part when playing on All-American, not sure how much it appears on Heisman. Still though if you are playing against quarterbacks like Colt McCoy they are going to frustrate you with their high-completion rates. That's real though. I remember feeling the same way back in 2007 when UCF hosted Texas, so no one's allowed to complain about this either.

As for the human offense, it can be tough to handle at times. With good sliders you are forced to watch your O-line total for about 10 pancakes a season, and look like total retards on plays at times. Blocking assignments are often blown resulting in plays where your back has no chance.

Nonetheless, this is a must to keep games close. Even when I feel like my O-line hasn't made a solid block all game long, I look at the stats and see I was sacked only once or twice. This is something the gamer will have get used to and accept if they want the CPU to put up a tough fight.

The only real changes in the passing game involve wobbly passes when the quarterback is hit while he's throwing and wide receivers acting like panzies and getting jammed by corners resulting in broken routes. These are both very annoying but help so that third down conversions are not as easy and make you have to take sacks from time to time instead of forcing passes.

This is only a portion of the gameplay and the most important things I have seen so far. As my dynasty continues and I start to see new things, I will take note of them and write about them here.

Right now I have just finished my first season with UCF. I went 10-4 losing to Memphis, Miami and Texas in the regular season. I beat Houston in the conference championship and then lost to Alabama 24-14 in the Liberty Bowl.

Florida and Oklahoma met for the national title again. UF completed a perfect season with Tim Tebow winning the Heisman. North Carolina and Boise State also finished their seasons undefeated but Florida was still first in both polls.

I received an invite to replace Duke in the ACC after one season and accepted. This also happend to me in NCAA 09 after one season with UCF, although I went 12-2 in that season.

That's all for now though, I'm off to watch my friend Andrew Espidol compete in a Fight Night Round 4 tournament in Orlando.


Thanks you my name is Andrew (this is my weird sign-off).

You can follow me and my dynasty on Twitter at https://twitter.com/akennedy41.