The Sporting News Baseball

The Sporting News Baseball brings America's favorite pastime to the computer with a surprisingly serious approach to statistics, strategy and play-by-play action. Rather than simply smashing a ball and running around the bases, the game tries to capture the managerial side of baseball, giving players plenty of decisions to make before anyone has even swung a bat. Lineups, pitching choices and tactical thinking all matter, making it appealing to anyone who considers a box score perfectly good bedtime reading. The presentation is inevitably dated, but the underlying idea remains sound: baseball is a game of patience, probability and occasionally spectacular stupidity. The Sporting News Baseball may not have the visual polish of later sports titles, yet it has the charmingly obsessive character of an old-school computer simulation that expects you to care about every player and every statistic.