At press time (these video game reviews go to bed a few days before the public gets to see them), the Toronto Blue Jays were busy losing 13-2 to Minnesota. It was ugly. Pat Hentgen was not proud of himself. The team nearly fell off the bottom of the Grapefruit League standings table. Gee whiz, we all said to ourselves, the new logo with the mean bird poking out the end really confers no extra powers or skills at all. Nor, you know, wins. Weak.

Still, you have probably recovered from your disappointment by now. Why are you so resilient? Because it is only spring training. Because it does not matter. Because the real season will not begin until next month. Unless you count games played in Japan for publicity's sake. Which you don't.

Now, do a bit of math. If the season really is going to begin next month, in April, and if the season lasts six months, tops, and if the playoffs take less than a month, what year will it be when the World Series is all wrapped up and done?

Correct. It will be 2004. Still. So right off the bat you have a very good reason to distrust MLB 2005. It is inflating the numbers for no good reason. It contains the rosters and players of 2004 Major League teams.

It does not know that Alex Rodriguez will have a vision late in the season and give up pro sports for a career as an artisanal pewtersmith. It does not know that Pete Rose will make a triumphant return to baseball as owner of the Reds, who will suddenly and mysteriously fall prey to the same loss-loving affliction that plagued their NFL counterparts, the Bengals, for so many years. It does not even know who will win the World Series this October. It totally has no business putting that "2005" on the cover. It should be embarrassed.

But never mind its dirty lies. How is MLB 2005 as a game? It is much better than any of us had dared hope. Its predecessor, MLB 2004, which came out last year (in 2003), was thin and disappointing. It felt pokey and phoned-in and was sluggish and obscure and not very much fun at all. It was boring. Now, it is a rare thing for a sports game to completely outshine the previous year's edition, because really good video games take more than a year to put together. Improvements usually trickle in a few at a time. One year the pictures may get a freshening-up. Another may see the introduction of a clever new control scheme or some exciting new camera angles. So when something like MLB 2005 comes along looking this fresh and smelling this good we all have cause for celebration.

How is the pitching? It is fun. Fun! When has pitching in a baseball video game been fun? It has not. Pitching in video games is the boring thing you suffer through while you wait for your turn to hit again. It is the frustrating exercise in picking a corner of the strike zone to throw at, and then watching as your strategically correct, perfectly delivered curveball gets knocked over the centre field wall.

Here everything is new again. The pitching is a joy. It is layers of decisions and judgment calls and closing your eyes and hoping for the best. It is simple enough that you will strike out a few batters on your first trip to the mound. It is challenging enough that you will totally get rocked in the bottom of the fifth and will lose your confidence and need to turn to the bullpen. It is pitching that feels like actually being a pitcher, pitching that pits you the baseball player against your opponent the baseball player. It is easy to lose yourself in MLB 2005 in a way you might in a good book. You care about the score and you root for the home team and sometimes you forget you are playing a video game at all.

Pitching as Roy Halladay is extra fun but it kind of feels like cheating. Try to use Pat Hentgen as often as possible. Apparently he could use the practice.