Review by: Brendon Lindsey

Right now, there's playoff atmosphere baseball on TV in March, and a handheld game is the second best baseball title of the year, in a year with actual competition. Am I the only person who wouldn't have believed that sentence a few years ago? Disbelief aside, it's the case. The WBC is changing the way fans watch spring baseball, and MLB 09: The Show on the PSP trumps (and thumps) 2K's offering this year, falling short only to its own PS3 counterpart of the same name.

Even on the PSP, The Show franchise continues to do baseball right. Ever since it came on the scene in 2006, it took over as King of Baseball Games, and even the handheld ports were surprisingly good. This year, though, Sony's San Diego studio topped itself, delivering a title that's not only good, but almost every bit as good as the PS3 version -- save a few obvious shortcomings when you compare the two.

Obviously, gameplay-wise not much has changed since last year, sans the usual roster and graphics update; this is a sports franchise, after all. One new thing to the franchise is an improved pitcher/batter analysis, allowing those who love stats a chance to see how each batter/pitcher fares against who they're up against, easily and with lots of nice statistics, sortable by LHP, RHP, pitch type, and result. The other "big" changes gameplay wise include a few minor changes to Road to the Show, a fifth difficulty level (Legend), some more intelligent CPU AI, and the removal of King of the Diamond.

Road to the Show was the focus of updates this season for the PS3 version, and a lot of that translates to the PSP. While some of the depth is missing, one much appreciated change is the ability to pick if you want to do fielding or batting for your player. No more wasting your time fielding the ball if you hate it! As someone who likes to create outfielders, it's a very welcome change, and you can ignore the boring parts of being an outfielder just like you're Manny.