Review - Star League Baseball

Baseball has been called our national game, although the football folks might want to dispute that. Nonetheless, the tarps are rolled back every April for another long season of this national pastime. I, for one, look forward to it every year; I think the game of baseball is as perfect a mixture of action, intensity, tactical variety, subtle strategy and rich tradition as the mind of man has been able to devise. Being an ardent baseball fan, I've been more than a little nettled by the fact that I couldn't get a decent baseball game for my 800, that is until Gamestar came along with a little beauty called Star League Baseball.

Star League Baseball (SLB) is a graphically spectacular, easy to learn baseball game, with enough playing options to satisfy all but the pickiest afficionado. SLB can be played between two players, or if you don't have a human handy and you enjoy pain you can take on your computer.

There are two starting pitchers available and a short reliever. "Heat" Muldoon has (obviously) a real barnburner of a fast ball, plus a good screwball and slider, but has little stamina and will tire quickly if his fast ball is used too often.

"Curves" Cassidy is the best all around pitcher, with a great curve ball, and a sinker that looks as if it fell off the end of a table. He has good stamina and excellent control. In the long run, Cassidy is the toughest pitcher to bat against when the player using him changes speeds and works the corners effectively. "Knuckles" Flanagan, the short relief pitcher, as you might guess, has a good knuckler, good control and is almost a necessity when starting with Muldoon. Once the game starts, everything is controlled through the joysticks. Throwing, catching, running, fielding and batting are all accomplished by using the joystick in conjunction with the fire button. Once you've gotten the mechanics of playing the game down, the fun starts.

As in the real game, pitching is the difference between winning and losing. "Heat's" fast ball is so brutally fast that it has to be anticipated. There's no way you can react to it, except to foul if off. Pitching strategy involves mixing your pitches well and learning your opponent's weak points. The timing is so critical that changing the speed of the pitches is as effective as it is in live baseball. "Going for the corners" involves throwing pitches, such as the sinker and curve ball, which will sometimes miss the strike zone, especially when Heat Muldoon is pitching in later innings. It takes a bit of practice to get to where you can pick the good pitches from the chaff, but the program provides a batting practice mode for just that purpose. (You can get all the fielding practice you want by playing against the computer.)

Pitching is by no means the only thing you've got to worry about. A good defense is not only important, it can save the game if your pitcher loses his "stuff" and starts getting hammered. It takes a lot of practice to consistently catch fly balls, intercept those steaming line drives, and turn the double plays. Developing a hard defense can not only win games for you, but it can have a devastating psychological effect on your opponent (computer excepted).

The program is filled with clever little touches. Between innings, there's an electronic scoreboard flashing a trivia question (actually a way of advertising an upcoming Gamestar computer game), the attendance and the scores of other games going on in the National and American Leagues. Throughout the game, the sound of the proverbial organist can be heard. All in all, the package is well done, and the playing of the game is fun and easy to grasp. As with Starbowl Football, the game has become a must to play when the gang get together for some hot competition, and I think it'll remain a staple on my game shelf for a long time to come.

Now the gripes. First and foremost, the fact that you can only change pitchers during the seventh inning stretch is very frustrating. I can see limiting the amount of times you can change your pitcher (one or two times), but limiting the players to one relief pitcher and dictating when the relief must be brought in, is sort of contrary to baseball strategy.

All Atari computers have, for some time, come in two flavors: either 16K or 48K (the new 64K XL computers actually have no more useable RAM than their 48K predecessors). It puzzles me why a game as good as this not only shortcuts on such things as the pitching changes, but shows such singular lack of imagination in providing optional game features, when they've got another 16K to work with. As good as this game is, it remains on a par with its home videogame offerings and fails to utilize the thing computers have that videogame consoles don't: the ability to process data which is stored outside of RAM, that is, stored on disk or tape.

Some of the features that could have been incorporated are, for instance, left and right-handed batters and pitchers, varying speeds for runners (both in the outfield and on base), pop flies, multiple pitching changes (assuming there was a difference between right and left-handed pitchers) and statistical differences between players and teams.

This last option would open up the game to simulate one aspect of baseball strategy sorely lacking in this game: pinch hitting and pinch runners. The last of the ninth, behind by one run, and your star glove comes up to bat. Not real hot with the stick, you decide to replace him with a slug of a base runner and a dolt in the field, but this guy can rap a ball... just as there's a difference between hitters in SLB as the game stands now (i.e., liners and sluggers), individual batters could be similarly loaded for power, average or just plain incompetence with a bat.

Finally, why not a side routine to allow the user to create team statistical files, to be used in the game so that he could play with the statistics of the Yankees... or the Red Sox or the Bohunk Bombers or any team of his choice. Or, if the powers that be had any imagination at all, sell the updated statistical files of all of the major league teams each year, much the same as the boardgamers do with their updated statistical cards.

Anyway, despite the lack of detail, Star League Baseball is definitely a must for the sports game enthusiast. It's fun, colorful and habit-forming.