The drawbacks are clear from the beginning and remain consistently disappointing throughout the game: The players are modeled like bobbleheads with no legs and LEGO-like faces, the menu screens make a traveling carnival look sedate and the announcer is as annoying and repetitive as they come. But for those willing to try Power Pros, which offers every indication of being a game for children and children only, there's a surprise in that game case. It's the deepest, most accurate and consistently realistic baseball game in years.

What Power Pros does right is astounding. The acts of pitching a baseball and hitting a baseball are very simple. You choose a pitch, choose the desired location and it goes. To hit it, you aim the bat toward the ball and swing. You can choose to hit for contact or swing hard, and your sweet spot changes accordingly. The action of the bat coming off the ball looks as true as real life, and the variety of hits seems limitless.

Computer opponents pull pitchers when they are tired or in trouble. It rearranges lineups against lefties when appropriate, but not without considering that some batters stay in their spot no matter who's hurling that day. Defensive plays by the computer follow the fundamentals of the game, there is bunting, and player progression is logical – there aren't teams full of .350 hitters in a few years of franchise mode.

Statistics in franchise mode (called "Season" in the menu) are not only accurate, but are as deep as any player could possibly want. Pitch location, and the results of each pitch are tracked. Situational stats of every sort are available. If there's a number you want to know, it's there. And the game knows the rules – saves, sacrifices, it's all scored correctly.

Those last three paragraphs are chock full of things that aren't true for any other baseball game in a long time.

All of that is enough to recommend Power Pros. But there's also a Success Mode, which is as much a role-playing game as it is a baseball game. Your created player starts off in college and instead of watching from the bench gives you things to do like decide how to practice and who to date. Once you're a little older and getting playing time, you'll get control of the game toward the end in order to make your mark. If you do well, you'll end up in the MLB free agent pool and continue your career. It's no sure thing, which makes it all the more interesting.

Fans of the Wii will feel slightly let down because motion controls are only supported in the "Wii Remote" mode, which includes 3 inning exhibitions for 1-2 players and a home run derby. In order to run the bases or chase the ball, you have to shake the remote, and it gets old pretty fast. Also, neither version of the game supports online play of any kind.

Getting past the presentation of MLB Power Pros is not easy. We've become accustomed to fairly realistic sports games. But we've also become numb to how poorly sports games represent the real thing. Power Pros is definitive proof that baseball can be recreated on a console. The game is fun, consistent, accurate and is, in every way, baseball. Over the course of nine innings and several seasons, it's clear that Konami knows baseball better than any other developer.