Friday Starter is a weekly column of news and tidbits from the world of baseball video games—past and present, domestic and foreign.
A week in Cooperstown and Atlanta
I spent the past week on vacation in Cooperstown and Atlanta, visiting the Baseball Hall of Fame and the MLB Home Run Derby and All-Star Game. Here are some video game-related pics from my trip:
There’s a special Japanese baseball exhibit at the Hall of Fame right now. And this section calls out video games in particular as something shared between Japanese and American baseball fans. Their example? Winnie the Pooh’s Home Run Derby, the famously harder-than-it-looks Flash game which enjoyed viral YouTube fame. 
The rather generic text from the video game part of the Japanese baseball exhibit. Winnie the Pooh’s Home Run Derby is introduced as “a game that has connected fans on both sides of the Pacific for more than a decade.” 
Several games were featured at the All-Star Village. Sony’s booth included a timeline of MLB The Show games. I guess due to him currently playing in Korea this year, Yasiel Puig’s appearance on MLB The Show 15 was not included. 
The three cover athletes of MLB The Show 25 all get featured. 
Despite the timeline of games, each TV is playing MLB The Show 25. 
One wall highlighted the All-Star Week events included in MLB The Show 25. 
You could stand in line to get a code for digital goods in-game. I saw one fan win 100,000 stubs, for example, which ain’t bad. 
A wall featuring Braves Hall of Famers included in The Show 25, for the hometown team at Truist Park. Hank Aaron’s face model isn’t a great selling point though. 
MLB don’t publish as many games as they used to, but they still have Home Run Derby VR. There were tons of VR units set up to give the game a try live. 
A different unknown game with a real ball that shoots out of the screen at you, tracking your contact quality and earning points. Not sure what this one was called! 
Lots of fans had giant oversized blue gloves from this Geico booth with a silly catching game. 
A Mizuno store at the Battery included a different, more professional-looking VR batting game. 
The All-Star Game featured a holographic/pyrotechnic tribute to Hank Aaron’s 715th home run to break Babe Ruth’s home run record. 
The museum bits in Truist Park included this cool program and Bob Horner’s 4-homer bat and a ball. 
I recreated this red pinstripe Braves uniform in Pro Yakyuu Spirits 2024-2025 a few months ago, so I was excited to see it in person here.
MLB The Show also made an appearance during the All-Star Game on the video board, occasionally showing a cutscene of a player’s looks in-game as the genuine article came to bat. Below is a video of Ohtani’s entrance on the big screen. The Show‘s face models have fallen behind the curve while the rest of the game has generally improved, so I don’t think this is a great promo at this point.
Links Dump
A quick rundown of some other baseball video-game related links from this week:
- Operation Sports ran a tribute to Adalberto Mondesi, one-time MLB The Show legend.
- The Athletic ran a piece about MLB The Show’s live content for All-Star Week. The writer tries to sell that this live content is difficult to make and involves some chaotic last-minute decisions. I’m sure that’s true to some extent, but I didn’t come away all that impressed with the details here.
- Kuya’s Game Room did a video taking on the highest difficulty of Pawapuro 2024-2025… with a live trumpet soloist playing the cheer songs for his team directly behind him. The trumpeting starts at 3:23, and the auto-translated English subtitles are decent enough. If you’ve ever tried the Powerful difficulty in Pawapuro, it’s mostly impressive to see someone take it on and not succumb to despair at the random home runs on perfectly thrown pitches.
Song of the Week
“Back in the Day” by K7 & Ty Bless. A rap over a bizarre and mismatched baseball organ beat, and also including “Love Theme from The Godfather” for some reason. Please enjoy.