When I finish with my professional obligations in writing about MLB The Show and sit down to play it for my own enjoyment, I'm nearly 100 percent a Road to the Show player. That's the game's career mode, where you bring a guy out of the minor leagues into the majors and, one hopes, stardom. But like the other PS3…

Odds are strong that the cover of MLB 13 The Show will be graced by a National League hitter, as six of seven candidates in this fan-voted contest are batters, and five of them are from the senior circuit.

Baseball fans have started to come to terms with the idea that MLB 13 The Show will be their only video game option next year. MLB 13 The Show needs to come to terms with that, too.

When Sony San Diego Studio needs to build a new major league ballpark for MLB The Show, they go to that ballpark, take hundreds of measurements and images, and spend about four months constructing it in the game. When they need new sounds you hear at that ballpark, they go to a minor league field.

Baseball fans will fetishize any detail. This year, MLB 2K11 will make the real-life broadcast camera angles of all 30 major league parks the default view in its game. MLB 11 The Show will, too, and add even more customization.

He'd given up six runs in three innings of work when MLB 10 The Show sent the manager out to remove him from the game. Even in a video game, the bad losses stick with you. They stick with Hans Smith a little more.

Cody Ross, Jimmy Rollins and newly minted Chicago White Sox (sock?) Adam Dunn star in these screens for MLB 11 The Show. There's a reason it's called the Gran Turismo of baseball, and not just because both are PS3 exclusives.

In a control switch that's likely to be controversial to some, MLB 11 The Show's default pitching, throwing and hitting controls will move to the right analog stick, though it will include the old face-button commands for the lifers.

Although I suppose Polo and Forbes are big brands in modern times. I just doubt they'd put it on a baseball park. SCEA's released this video of the six classic ballfields available with an MLB 10 The Show preorder.