You wouldn’t be able to tell from the weather, but baseball season is in full swing across the country. Opening day at Miller Park was more like a tailgate for a Packers game, as hefty men in blaze-orange jumpsuits lugged their Miller Lite and Little Smokies across the parking lot in a drunken stupor.

Thankfully, the Brewers are canopied by a retractable roof that helps keep the stadium warm. But for those who aren’t interested in catching the Brew Crew take another on the chin, there’s EA Sports’ “MVP Baseball 2003.”

Baseball titles are tricky terrain for the companies that produce them. The inherently slow pace of baseball in a Mountain Dew Code Red sports culture makes selling baseball games to the public a little more challenging.

As with all its titles, EA takes the extra step in preparing its discs for distribution, combining classic elements with cutting-edge entertainment features to entice its customer base. The formula has helped EA Sports pull ahead of cut-rate competitors like 989 Sports.

Some game companies lure customers by deception. No names will be given, but sometimes what you see on the back of the box is not what you get when you put the disc in your Playstation 2. With EA Sports, what you see is what you get.

To start, EA scores big points with the quick loading times of its titles. Whether this is crafty programming or better technology at play, the brief, one-time pause before a game starts is well worth the wait in order to enjoy a full game.

“MVP” is loaded with the features necessary to give the game a better sense of realism than past efforts. To start, every major league stadium is represented in all its detailed glory. You may not see the guy in the left-field stands punching out the schlemiel who spilled a five-dollar cup of beer on his girl, but that may find its way on a future EA release.

In addition to the intricate styling of the stadiums, players are also meticulously crafted. With any baseball game, the most important aspect to look at is the pitching and batting modes. EA presents a new pitcher-batter interface in “MVP.” The alignment of the pitcher-batter view takes a bit of getting used to, but control of batting is a big leap forward. You can more accurately direct your hits, which is beneficial when you’re trying to hit to the opposite field.

The pitching interface is nice but a bit bothersome. Some pitchers have a limited arsenal (i.e. fastball, curveball, etc.) and the jumpy analog control of pitch locations is a little aggravating. No matter how much you want the target to stay in place, it’s going to move back to its starting position, leaving you with little idea of where your pitch is going to go. Regardless, once you play around with it for a while, it becomes easier to tolerate.

Other on-field features like individual control of base runners and the option of automatic assistance for fielding help make the game more manageable.

Standard EA features like the franchise mode allow you to be the general manager and take your team to the World Series by negotiating trades, drafting players, scouting and controlling just about every detail of your organization except what brand of hot dogs you want to sell as concessions.

Of course, there are also the traditional exhibition, season and playoff modes, all with varying degrees of difficulty. Rookie mode is too easy to dominate, so you may want to start at the pro level.

“MVP Baseball 2003” also sports a head-to-head home run showdown where you and another player or the computer can compete side-by-side in a race for distance. A classic home run derby would have worked better in this situation, but the side-by-side competition gets better with time.

There’s plenty of music to fill the gaps of the game, with tunes from the likes of Sum 41, Burning Brides, Taproot, The Exies, The Donnas, Revis and more.

In the end, “MVP Baseball 2003” is another strong addition to the EA lineup. It far exceeds the competition in detail, realism and ease-of-play. Could the pitching mechanism be a little easier to use? Sure, but this is the best baseball title on the market, and it’s a foregone conclusion that the next installment from EA will be even better.

Grade: A/B