You haven’t really seen my name linked to a sports title before. There’s a very good reason for that. I don’t watch sports (OK — I watch the Olympic, gymnastics and figure skating), and I don’t play traditional sports. I do enjoy Wii Fit and Wii Sports, but that’s about as far as it goes. I chose to review Major League Baseball 2K9 because my daughter likes playing baseball (sometimes) and my nephew (I’ll call him “C”) loves baseball. For the record, both kids are 9.

I started my great play-date experiment by letting my nephew C initially load the game while I watched. We had some slight delays figuring out which teams to play with, but he did figure it out on his own. We’re in Colorado, so of course he had to pick the Rockies.

You can play with one or two players, which is nice. The system is more than happy to beat you with its computer-controlled team if you can’t find a buddy to play with.

The first time each player comes up to bat or pitch, you get the option to run through the tutorial. I like that experienced players have the option to skip the tutorials while noobs like me can continue the tutorial mode as long as they need to, or until their arm falls off, whichever comes first.

C did really well with the tutorials. It only took him one pass through each one and he was ready to go — and he had learned it well enough to help his grandma play when my daughter dropped out of the experiment. It was obvious that being on a little league baseball team (apparently he plays first base) really helped him get the swing of things right off.

I’m not a baseball player. I don’t even watch the game. I took my time with the pitching tutorial and at least came away with the basics. I won’t say I was good — given that the other team had 12 runs by the end of the first inning — but I did know basically what I was supposed to do. I never did manage to keep a curveball in the strike zone though, and I never figured out what I was doing wrong. I stuck with fastball or change-up (and I have no clue what change-up means — I just wanted to not throw a fastball every time).

I actually felt like I might be able to play the basic game — at least until it was my first turn at bat. Much like Wii Sports, I could not judge where the incoming ball was relative to my bat. I wish that part were done at some sort of slight angle to give some perspective, or maybe have a small top down view in the lower area of the screen. I repeated this part of the tutorial quite a bit before I even managed to hit the ball ... and then batting went from hard to sadistic.

The batting tutorial kicked it up a notch at this point. It added this little three-by-three grid of targeting boxes. The pitcher is aiming at one of those boxes. Along with timing trying to just hit the ball with the Wii-mote in my right hand, I was supposed to use the nunchuk joystick in my left hand to try to aim at the same box the pitcher had chosen. I was never able to successfully do this and never made it past this point of the game.

My nephew, on the other hand, did just fine with this part. Not only was he able to master the coordinated aim and hit (though he did say it was hard), he was also able to teach Grandma how to do this part. Who knows — maybe if I’d gotten him to tutor me, I could have made it through this part, too.

C also did well with fielding the ball when he was pitching. My idiot team (OK, it was the same team) dropped that dang ball, if I even got them to pick it up, and invariably threw it to the wrong person. I don’t think my guys ever did catch one in the air. I was very frustrated. C had a lot of fun. I definitely could have used a tutorial for this part. C obviously didn’t need one.

I asked him how he felt about the overall atmosphere of the game. He felt it was very realistic. He liked the announcers. He liked the music. He thought the players looked fine. To both him and Grandma, Coors Field was definitely recognizable. I had less happy thoughts about the announcers — mainly because they were telling the world what an awful player I was. I think the music annoyed me because I was already frustrated and playing so poorly.

Beyond the actual playing of baseball, there is a whole other area of the game. Apparently there are digital trading cards to unlock. You can also really get into the guts of the game and tinker with your rosters and lineups, trade players around, etc. I really didn’t do anything with this area, and C was more interested in just playing the game. In any case, I don’t feel I know enough about baseball to have the faintest clue of whether they did a good or bad job in this area.

I felt it was a bit challenging navigating the menus, and I think C did too, though he caught on faster than I did.

My nephew enjoyed the game quite a bit, and I know he’s looking forward to playing again. My poor sports skills, near complete lack of baseball knowledge and dodgy hand-eye coordination mean that I’m more than happy to have the game live at Grandma’s house for him to play when he visits.