Babe Ruth at the Polo Grounds in MLB2K10

ALTHOUGH I DON'T HAVE MUCH TIME anymore to play video games, I'm still a huge fan of baseball games. I wasn't privy to the ultra old school RBI Baseball or Baseball Stars games on Nintendo, but I did take my baseball gaming more seriously around 1996 with Old Time Baseball and the Tony LaRussa series. It was both exciting and frustrating to see the potential and limitations of those games. Fast forward 14 years and although there have been previous player editors, including Triple Play's face upload feature for custom ballplayers, I was pleasantly surprised to see the custom player creator in MLB2K10.

The player creator now includes the ability to customize a player's entire body including numerous head editing options, all done in a 3D environment. So I decided to take it to task and bring Babe Ruth back to life in MLB2K10. The pictures below are a few samples of him playing right field at the Polo Grounds. It's not a perfect editor, but I was surprised at how close I was able to get to a young Ruth.
Combined with MLB2K10's visual implementation of depth of field in which backgrounds become blurry while the player remains in focus, I've come to the conclusion that not only is MLB2K10 a beautiful baseball game to look at, but it's also a nice tool for generating 3D baseball pictures. And it's the latter that actually interests me moreso than playing the game.

Red, Cream and Blue Colored Jerseys

AS I WAS WATCHING Stephen Strasburg pitch against Cleveland on Sunday, it occurred to me how much of a throwback feel the Indians home alternate jerseys have. Part of it is the simple block letters in the front as well as the red-on-blue "C" logo on the cap. But the back of the jersey also stands out to me because of the absence of the nameplate. So the only two things you see are the small MLB logo at the top and the number. It's dead simple, yet has that old-fashioned, All-American look to it.



It made me wonder if there were any other jerseys out there like this one with red and blue, and the only other one you'll find is the Minnesota Twins home jersey which includes pinstripes. The Phillies, Giants and Mets also make use of the cream-colored jersey, just that they also have nameplates and/or an alternate color such as orange in the MLB logo.