SportsBlahg

It looks like Tiger Woods 2009 is set to be a pretty solid title, at least according to the folks at Gamespot. While we think that it is cool to have Hank Haney tell us why we suck; the Sportsblahg wants to see some more things added before we hop on board:

1. Spaz-O-Meter: This feature, much similar to what they have in the WWE game, would basically build up as you hit bad shots. As your frustration mounts, you are less likely to waive to the crowd, and more likely to curse and throw your club. When your meter hits full, the next bad shot you hit, no matter where you are, unleashes something like this:

2. PayPal functionality: For the online multiplayer games, because man wouldn’t THAT make online skins matches more interesting

3. The “Opt-Out Excuse” feature: This allows you to choose to be like Rory Sabbatini and cop out of a tournament you’re sucking in by giving a half-baked answer or allows you to just come right out and say, “Listen, I only showed up to collect my check”. Wouldn’t it be great to have a little honesty?

4. The Clothing “Optional” Clause. Because let’s face it, if John Daly does it, it should be legal!

John Daly, physical specimen

5. Celebrity events/characters: Because as much fun as it is to play with real golfers and made up characters, I’d love to be able to unlock Tony Romo, Ray Romano or George Lopez.

Tiger Woods 2009 “swings” into stores this fall.

In response to recent events and fines, we at the Sportsblahg feel it necessary to educate our readers on the finer points so that when they see things happen they can so very clearly tell the difference. Therefore, let’s play, Is it a gang symbol?

#1

Answer: NO, while it may look like the Golden State Warrior is trying to message his hommies, he’s actually just happy that people still like him despite the Warriors not making the playoffs. Read the rest of this entry »

So I’m not going to take full credit for this, but look at what happens when the Sportsblahg starts talking about gaming titles that they wish to see return, the magically begin to reappear. Take our friends at Activision, not a month after the Sportsblahg publishes a story on the best baseball video games, they go right ahead and announce the return of Little League Baseball.

Now the Sportsblahg understands that games aren’t made over night, but it IS a little interesting that Activision decided to wait until AFTER the Sportsblahg’s article to make the announcement. We just hope that they include Chinese Taipei in it again!!

If you haven’t seen this article regarding the Patriots still trying to trademark the “19-0″ slogan, despite going 18-1 last season. Well it got me thinking of what other slogans would be good for other Boston sports team:

• “1986 World Series Champions”
• “The Tim Duncan Era”
• “The Hartford Whalers, Team of the 21st Century”
• “Honesty, Integrity, Patriots”
• “The Boston Bruins, Boston’s true hometown team”
• “Pedro Martinez, 2003 ALCS MVP“
• “The Bean Pot, Better than Lord Stanley’s Cup”
• “New England Revolution, 11 Names You’ll Never Forget”

I finally got a chance to play MLB 2K8 (that’s right I said 2k, as the silly commercial says). The game is great, graphics are sweet, player movements are near identical and the best part was, when my girlfriend walked by, she asked, “What game are you watching?”. Nothing gives more props to a game than someone not being able to tell the difference between the two (granted if you sit down and watch it, you can tell the difference, but they’re working on it). Not to mention I got real time updates of MLB and other sports news on the scroll button at the bottom of my screen (when I’m connected to Xbox Live).

What bummed me out most about this game was how complicated the controls on it were. I mean to throw a pitch you have to move the control stick one direction and then move it another direction to throw it (sometimes spinning clockwise/counter clockwise). Maybe at the age of 24, I am officially starting to get old to newer video games, but they don’t even allow you to play retro style anymore, which I think is ridiculous. So in protest, I decided to scour my collection of baseball games that I’ve played over the past 20 years (and believe me there are many) to find my favorites and they are listed below:

• Major League Baseball (1988) - This was the game that really started all things managerial within the video game of baseball. The game allowed folks to pinch hit, bring in relievers, choose your DH before the game starts (depending on the pitching match up) and my absolute personal favorite, the creation of switch hitters, and allowing them to switch between batting lefty & righty (sometimes in the same at bat!). Not to mention it featured superstar Hall Of Famers like Ozzie Guillen, Ricky Henderson and a young Roger Clemens (shortly after that 20 strike out season) AND you get to play the All-Star game (woot!) with All-Star players. This game paved the way for games to become more complicated and situational (which I like), while keeping things like hitting, bunting, base running and fielding simple (A, B, Directional Pad).
• High Heat Baseball (2002) - This was one of the shortest lived franchises in baseball creation history (2002 to 2004) but it was great for what it was, a statisticians baseball video game. This game had more stats than most people knew what to do with, which was great. To top it off, they kept the game play simple (again I like). However, the graphics, sound, and players were pretty horrible (as the obvious Yankee fan below will tell you). However this game certainly made light of the fact that certain fans of video baseball games like statistics and to have a successful game, you need to have stats in there. But you also need to have good graphics, semi-realistic players (my favorite was Brian Schneider, a white guy from Jacksonville Florida was blacker than night. Seriously High Heat, do some research!).
• Tecmo Baseball (1989) - Oh man, this was the mother load of fun game play. I spent HOURS playing my older cousin in this game, mostly because the umpires were so ridiculously short with their calls (OUT! SAFE!), I remember just walking off the base and walking back on it repeatedly just to hear him yell “SAFE”, since the play doesn’t end until both teams stop moving (not throwing the ball, but moving all together). I also loved the fact that you could dive, but just one kind of dive and it could only be in a diagonal direction, which is funny because you could only run horizontally or vertically in the game (and there was one speed). But you COULD move your pitcher around the mound (left to right) to get a better “angle”. The ultimate though is after you hit a home run, you get to watch your player run by his teammates waiving his arms at his player like he has two stubs instead of two arms, priceless. Oh, and the music is also top-notch (Baseball Tonight took notes).
• ESPN Baseball Tonight (1994) - My favorite version of this franchise was on the SEGA Genesis and boy was it awesome! I was a huge fan of Sportscenter even back in ‘94 (yes, I was 10, shut up). This game was great, it featured actually personalities I knew like Chris Berman (this is pre-Karl Ravich, Jon Kruk, Steve Phillips days). This was also one of the first gaming titles to feature a home run derby, which for my friends and I was much more exciting than playing an entire game. Not to mention it was a major step for ESPN in their growth by aligning themselves with Sony to create this game. Now Jon Miller and Joe Morgan (along with Jeanne Zelasko) are staples in the 2K franchise every year. Despite the fact that in 1994, Major League Baseball stabbed me (and my Expos) in the heart by canceling the season, this game at least kept me occupied in September and October (I believe my created Expos team finished a strong 116-46 that year). It was fine, because while I hated the real owners of baseball, Chris Berman kept me smiling with his, “It could…… GO…… ALL…. THE…… WAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAY… Home Run”. Thank you Boomer, you saved me in ‘94.
• MLB Slugfest (2006) - And just when we thought that all that would be made were nice, clean titles about baseball players, Midway games goes and throws us a fastball inside at chin level with MLB Slugfest 2006. This title played heavily on the fact that MLB players were “larger than life” and juiced that way. The hitters could hit balls 600 feet, the pitchers could throw balls so fast that flames would appear on them, and my personal favorite of course was the fact that instead of sliding, you just punched your way into the base you were going for. (Isn’t that the only way?) What other game can you have drama and action like this?
• Little League Baseball (1990) - Easily the GREATEST baseball game ever created, because where else can you play Illinois for Japan? This game, like “Ice Hockey” was comprised of three players: Short and Fast, Tall Skinny and Average, and my personal favorite, Fat Slow and Powerful (because stereotypes are fair). The single coolest feature in this game was deciding who would be home and who would be away. It was determined by a bat toss (see below if confused) where the home and away team can almost be completely random each time (talk about fairness). If you want hints for this game, the team to be is Hawaii, they have like ALL fat kids, because apparently that’s where all fat kids come from, and they can hit better than the Yankees (the early 2000 teams with Shef, A-Rod, Giambi, Soriano, etc). If there is any time when I feel like I need a pick me up from baseball, I turn to the game that doesn’t have all the drama of the MLB, nor the age issues of that little Danny Almonte kid. I turn to Little League World Series on a modded PC (or redone NES) near you!

I’ll now sit back and wait for these games to start appearing on Xbox Live Arcade, that would make me very happy

Seeing as today is April 1st, typically known to the jokester world as April Fools Day, I thought it would be funny to write some completely bogus news story and try and circulate it around the internet. But then I realized something, have you looked at the top stories in Major league baseball lately? I think there’s a higher power playing an April Fool’s day joke on us already:

• The Washington Nationals are #1: That’s right, not just #1 in the NL East, not just #1 in the National League, but the BEST TEAM IN BASEBALL!! At 2-0, the Nationals have won two tight games (one at home, one on the road). Now let’s be honest with ourselves, this is bound to not last (or maybe it might, who remembers the 2006 season?). But it certainly is probably a sticker shock for most that the top team in the major leagues this season was out of the ‘07 playoffs by July. Read the rest of this entry »

For many teams simply selling seats at their respective stadium is difficult. Many turn to (as most companies do) to the world of advertising. Now I may be a little hyper-critical in this realm because I have worked for an Ad Agency and I think what I created there was pretty darn good. Or perhaps we should first look at the teams that did not come up with slogans: The Angels, Astros, Athletics, Brewers, Cardinals, Cubs, Diamondbacks, Dodgers, Indians, Padres, Phillies, Rays and White Sox. I’m sure we can come up with some good ones for those teams, but wait, most of them finished last season above or around .500. Perhaps you don’t need a catchy slogan if your team isn’t TERRIBLE? It’s just a thought….

The Good:

Boston Red Sox - “2007 World Series Champions”

Colorado Rockies - “2007 National League Champions”

New York Yankees - “All-Star Summer”

New York Mets - “Last Season at Shea”

Cincinnatti Reds - “C You There”: Probably the best one from a creative stand point. Although if for some reason a person didn’t know the Reds play in Cincinnati (which is possible) they would be confused. But I think for most of America, the message will be understood.

Read the rest of this entry »

After reading about all the “interesting” situations going on with this preseason and major league baseball teams traveling to Asia (Chan Ho Park incident, Red Sox incident), the Sportsblahg feels it is necessary to help Major League Baseball better pick locations for next season’s pre-season run around: Read the rest of this entry »

While everyone is trying to tell you who is going to win the Big Dance, the Sportsblahg is going to take a different stance and tell you the teams that are NOT going to win the tournament. Granted 64 teams won’t will (well, 63 now), but the Sportsblahg is comfortable that the following teams will not be the ones dancing to “One Shining Moment” by David Barrett: Read the rest of this entry »

My parting thoughts after watching the championships are pretty simple ones: Basketball is awesome no matter where it is played. The men’s and women’s championship games in the Mountain West Conference were both slugfests between teams that left it all on the court. It’s amazing to think that next week, these teams will likely get crushed by a major conference team, but presently that couldn’t be further from people’s thoughts. It’s can’t believe how exciting basketball (and sports in general) can be when you get two evenly matched teams in a packed arena full of excited fans.

Basketball in Vegas? Well it is something truly special isn’t it! My thoughts on the pros & cons of this past weekends Mountain West Conference Championships: Read the rest of this entry »