[rasnell]

After many, many hours of beta testing, I love the fact that :

1. We don't lose Ted Williams for four or five years of his prime and he actually sets every MLB record for BA, hits, HR, OB.

2. We see just how great Shoeless Joe Jackson would have been if he wouldn't have gotten involved with gamblers at such a young age. He tops Rose and Cobb in hits.

3. We learn the names and are sent to the Baseball Encyclopedia and other books to learn more about the deadball era players.

4. We see realistic surprises and what might have been if J.R. Richard had not been knocked down by a stroke.

5. What Pete Rose did in hits is sheer willpower and durability and is hard to match, even in the most accurate sim, because he defies the normal curve for aging and injury.

6. Bert Blyleven repeatedly is a solid pitcher and when you look at his real life numbers you understand why.

7. Just how remarkable Babe Ruth was as a pitcher and a slugger as you play the games out, look at all of the rest of the players of his era, and know that nobody knew about steroids yet.

8. We never have a strike or the season interrupted by a work stoppage. My love of baseball is not quite the same as it used to be before the strike. Yet nothing seems to destroy this game because of how great it is. Just as we're losing these great inner-city kids who are outstanding baseball players and had the door opened by Jackie Robinson, the game saves itself by finding all these super Japanese and Latin American athletes. Can you imagine the career numbers of Ichiro if he had started his pro career with MLB?

9. Modders give us the ability to see all of these historic players, even back to 1901, with real pictures. We get to play in the stadiums with photos from any era.

As I wrote in my first blog related to this release, OOTP 2007 is making history with a Japanese parent company (in a nation that truly appreciates and puts baseball first as its favorite sport), a subsidiary in London that brought the world Football Manager, a German developer whose love of the game is obvious and his drive to bring us the best simulation is proven by the results, and the ability to show the world how and why baseball became such a huge American pastime.