There are no two ways about it - I am obsessed with fantasy baseball, the compiling of fake teams based on real players and real stats from Major League Baseball, who compete with others in online leagues. These games essentially allow fans to experience firsthand the General Manager as well as manager experience, running their own team, making trades, roster changes and setting line-ups as they see fit. But once the season is over, the majority of leagues end forever and the wait to start anew begins - quite unlike their real life counterparts.

Enter Out of the Park Baseball 2007, a baseball simulator that ditches the glam of direct control console baseball for the stat-driven, text-based world of the General Manager. You are in charge of everything in the front office, from your major league and minor league rosters to personnel and finances, even taking over for the manager, setting line-up cards and calling the shots from the dugout! To top all of the single player thrills off, you can participate in all of the same things in online leagues! Be warned though; what may start as a cure for baseball-free winters will quickly turn into a baseball virus, as whatever shortcomings Out of the Park has are quickly overridden by the sheer fact that there is no other product on the face of the planet - that I know of - that is as close to running a real baseball team as this. Say goodbye to your free time, because Out of the Park has just hit it out of the park!

If you are a newcomer to General Manager simulators, as I am, then you may be in for quite a shock, because Out of the Park is one mammoth game. There is so much to experience, tweak, add, subtract and much more that the manual alone is over 500 pages. Yes, that's not a typo - over 500 pages!! This may prove far too intimating for some gamers, but don't let appearances fool you - the majority of the game is very self-explanatory and needs very little manual consultation. With my fantasy baseball experience alone, I had little trouble creating a game from the "Create-A-Game" Wizard and then jumping right in, using the intuitive interface to guide me along.

Take note, as I used the phrase 'intuitive interface' - this is a very important statement, because just about every aspect of this game is text-based. There are no fancy 3D graphics here - unless you are talking about the impressive Face-Gen face generator for fake players. You navigate the game much like you would a webpage, using hot links and back/forward arrows to move around, and right clicks to access an action toolbar. The game runs official websites for every team, with news stories and stats, many of which can be exported as web pages that can be viewed with your own browser or archived for later viewing. Not only does this Internet impersonation route imbue the game with familiarity, but it makes moving in and out of menus dynamically easy. My only complaint is the inability to open links in separate pages in-game, as I wasted a lot of time jumping between unrelated pages. If you can make your way around ESPN.com then you can set your line-ups, make roster changes, set ticket prices and just about every other task in the game with no problems.

Out of the Park doesn't have a license, meaning there is no Major League Baseball affiliation out of the box. Don't worry though, because with a few downloads and simple patching, you can add everything for real rosters, player pictures, team logos and stadiums from the past 100+ years of Major League Baseball, college baseball, Minor League baseball and even international baseball! Check the 'Mods' forum on the official website for all your patch needs). From there, your choices are endless for how you want to play; you can take control of any team at any time period in any league in any country, you can mix and match rosters and history all you want, and if you want to create your own baseball dynasties then the game will create all-fictional teams, players, stadiums… the works.

But be honest, there is nothing more you'd rather do than take control of your favorite team and run it the way you see fit! As a Seattle Mariners fan, a team with an idiotic general manager and a streak of losing records, I made sure my first run through Out of the Park was at their helm, attempting to turn the franchise around. Your new game starts in the winter, right after the time Major League Baseball holds its Winter Meeting - a gathering of agents and general managers around the league as they hammer out trades and sign free agents. This is a wonderful place to start, giving you ample time to assess your team, make trades and set your line-ups for the upcoming Spring Training season. Don't expect to be the only team making moves though, as every team is active, addressing their team's needs and building a team around their plans for the year, be they to go for the World Series, attempt to contend or rebuild from the bottom up. And they won't only look to you for solutions, as the computer general managers have no problem trading amongst themselves.

As you enter the real season, you can delegate tasks to your personnel, such as leaving running the actual games to the manager, do everything yourself if you prefer the hands-on approach, or go somewhere in between, dropping in and out as you please. After each game, any one of what seems like an endless amount of events can transpire, from injuries of varying severities, retirement announcements, trade demands, trade offers, extension requests, personnel turnovers and much more. You have control over a team of scouts who can be sent around the world, providing reports on any player, team, organization or even country existing in your game world. These are key to keeping your minor league teams - and therefore your major league team - stocked, giving you some of the info necessary to making the right moves when it comes to keeping, trading or dropping players.

Now, if only you could always get all of the info necessary from these scouting reports. This is where the problems in Out of the Park's seemingly impenetrable skin begins to emerge. The scouting reports you request only tell you the player's rankings and his current potential compared to other players around the league from the same position, but there are other scouting reports that you receive randomly that cannot be requested, which discuss how a player is improving or faltering with their game. There were many times when I wanted to check in on a player's progress beyond the stats and minimal human emotion characteristics provided, to find out if they were going through a rough patch or were actually suffering from a problem that needed to be identified and rectified - but that's just not possible.

For those players you do receive this random scout reporting for, as well as any other player you may be worrying about, there is very little you can actually do to remedy their situation. You cannot ask a coach to spend extra time with a player, talk to a player, or check on their mechanics beyond the numbers and smiley faces. It felt as if the humanity was stripped from the players and the game, which I found horribly frustrating. I don't want to keep sending out an overpaid yet grumpy pitcher who just keeps getting inexplicably shelled every time he's on the mound. In the real world, the manager talks to the player, they take extra practice and watch tapes of their performances, among many other things, rather than just continuing to be angry and pitch badly.

Despite the hole that the lack of a human touch leaves, the resulting frustration did very little to keep me from handing my life over to this game, losing myself inside it for hours on end. I would tell myself, "Okay, I'll just boot it up for a hour," then find myself still setting minor league line-ups and searching the waiver wire four hours later, without any intention of leaving the computer. There are just so many aspects of baseball that only Out of the Park can provide, opening doors to the inner General Manager that you may not have known even existed. Unless you find fantasy baseball boring and daunting, there shouldn't be a single aspect of this game that will keep you from coming back for more. And more. And more. And… well, you get the picture.

There are very few games that can provide the lasting appeal of Out of the Park. On top of all the options that can be tweaked, possibilities explored and fantasies lived on your own, there is the very important feature of online play, which allows you to experience all of this with other live players. Setting up your own league can be a bit confusing for those not versed in HTML lingo, but joining one is as easy as visiting the official website's forum and posting through the manager wanted threads that litter the message board. This game will take you as far as your love of baseball will, meaning that you could play for weeks, months or even years on end without a hint of boredom! And if this still isn't enough to convince you, then you could always try the free demo and see for yourself!

Out of the Park Baseball 2007 is not a perfect game, as it lacks the human touch that fills baseball and its general manager positions, but there are so many aspects that it digitally replicates with excellence that this doesn't matter. The fan community isn't as large as some, but it is active and growing, constantly producing new add-ons for the game, as well as making up many of the online general managers you may find yourself competing with. Again, don't let the text and stat based gameplay deter you from this game, as it's the perfect extension to fantasy baseball, and as a newcomer to the entire general manager gaming genre, I had no trouble diving in headfirst. All in all, Out of the Park is like a pitcher throwing a no hitter, with the only base runners coming via walks - an extraordinary feat that just missed perfection.

Reviewed by Tony Peters for AceGamez (All Rights Reserved).