Let's cut to the chase. Derek Jeter Pro Baseball 2007 is a better baseball game than its EA MVP Baseball rival. But it's maddening that EA continues to score rights to the MLB and MLBPA assets in the mobile space. Pro Baseball is head and shoulders a better playing, looking and sounding baseball game for wireless. If this was by merit, then MVP Baseball should be the one without the real players.

This year's Pro Baseball 2007 is easier for casual players to catch on. The pitching is slower on easier settings allowing you some modicum of time to plan where you're going to swing your bat in the strike box. That said I found the pitching to be more realistic. No longer can you hit the same area in the strike box with the same pitch to ward off a legion of sluggers. There is a meter for pitching accuracy which, depending on the fatigue of the pitcher, will be less lenient over time. That's usually queue for you to send in relief if you don't want to make the game too hard on yourself. I liked the fielding enhancements too. Fielding used to be all but impossible on manual settings but this year I felt the fielding is more manageable. With some effort, you can actually do your own fielding better than the AI but that depends on how much of an effort you want to give the mobile game.

Like previous years, you can play shorter inning games as well as go sudden death in playoffs, exhibition matches or home run derbies. For the most part, I thought games were pretty balanced. There aren't any wild 20+ scoring games, nor are there many zero zero snooze fests.

As they were last year, the visuals are top notch. Pro Baseball 2007 definitely gets the field and the stadiums right. The blimps, home run celebrations, varying weather and time of day conditions are second to none. What makes the whole package that much better are the various baseball audio cues and speech effects that capture the spirit of baseball succinctly.

I can't, however, close the review without saying that it's a disappointment that no effort was made to at least pretend the player's names were re-hashes of their real identities. I remember on the PC where baseball games used to play with Riger Clomens or something to that effect. At the very least we could call the guy Funk Tomas or something versus some totally random name. It didn't bother me the first year I saw Pro Baseball but year after year, the lack of the franchises does begin to bother me especially since the game is so playable.