Slowly but surely, the Season Ticket Baseball series (known online under the Out of the Park Baseball brand name) is moving into Championship Manager territory. Fans of the UK's legendary soccer management simulation know that this is no mean feat. One of the best-selling game series in Europe over the past decade, the Championship Manager line has captured the imagination of millions and set new standards for sports sims--and probably has broken up more than a few marriages along the way. Games just don't get more addictive.

Taking the helm of your club on the field is a snap.

Season Ticket Baseball 2003--originally released online at the start of March as Out of the Park Baseball 4--isn't quite at that stage yet. But the big-league management series is getting there, judging by the steady progress made with each new edition. One-man design team Markus Heinsohn and his company Out of the Park Developments have been fine-tuning their approach to provide a game that is more true to life in every area. Most of these improvements are of the minor variety, although they add up to an impressive overhaul that affects all aspects of gameplay for the better. While a few omissions and some design oddities keep this one out of Cooperstown, there is no better sports management sim available on this side of the Atlantic.

What makes Season Ticket 2003 so good is its sweeping focus. Where rival baseball management series such as Diamond Mind and APBA Baseball for Windows are fixated on single-season replaying, Heinsohn's game lets users control teams over multiple years. You can take over the front office of your choice at virtually any point in time in baseball history and continue for as many seasons as you like. Accurate historical numbers are provided by an importer that adjusts player ratings for the time period selected. For instance, if you want to experience the dead ball era, just dial the beginning of your career back a hundred years. Authentic rosters can be downloaded with files from the Internet.

There is a lot here--even if you're not a historical baseball buff. You can play in single mode or multiple season mode, with either the default league setup currently operated by Major League Baseball or an arrangement of your own with up to 40 teams in as many as two leagues with six divisions. Human players can take the reins on any number of teams in a league, both on a single machine and via the Net. Online play is a strong attraction. It is similar in feel to the fantasy leagues offered by ESPN.com, but with much more interactivity and the welcome absence of subscription fees. As a result, hard-core baseball fans can really lose themselves. It's even easier for commissioners this year, thanks to a new FTP option that permits them to update online leagues in a single step. Season Ticket 2003 and Out of the Park Baseball 4 share an identical file system, so owners of one game can get involved in online leagues with owners of the other. The only potential problem involves patch releases. Because Out of the Park is typically updated a couple of weeks before Season Ticket, owners might find their game files incompatible for a time.

Every player in the game is given personal characteristics.

Gameplay is realistic from the very beginning. You start from scratch with an off-season signing period, in which you compete for coaches and scouts in a bidding war. Competition is cutthroat, and you typically have just one chance at the better people available. Bid high, because you can't really pay too much for the good coaches needed to develop players and the good scouting director required to obtain accurate assessments on players. Scrape the bottom of the barrel, and your prospects won't develop on the farm. Even worse, you could wind up with a half-witted head scout who thinks that everyone is a surefire phenom. As much of your success depends on offseason drafting, trading, and a 30-day free-agent signing auction, this can be disastrous. Still, the possibility that you're not getting the complete story adds a welcome dimension to play. Instead of being an omniscient god, you're an all-too-human boss delegating authority to underlings who sometimes don't know what they're doing.

Even when you do have the right people in the right jobs, players can cause you problems. In addition to the traditional statistical categories and skill ratings, each player is given six character attributes--loyalty, needs winning team, team leader ability, clutch performance, consistency, injury rating--that help or hamper his contribution to the team. Some of these characteristics are cut-and-dried. Someone with poor loyalty will leave for the first team to offer him more money, and someone who doesn't do well in the clutch can't be expected to contribute a game-winning RBI in the bottom of the ninth. Others lead to uncertain consequences. Wanting to play for a winner inspires such a player in good times and brings him down in bad times, while one with top leadership abilities might run into a "too many cooks" conflict on some teams. The result could be spending too much of that precious budget money on a player who has the right numbers but is still the wrong fit for your club. All in all, you're given a lot to think about here. Much more than simple number crunching is required to assemble a winning team.

Fortunately, you're given a lot of information to use in judging your charges. Menu screens are thorough and professionally designed, if a touch lacking in modern amenities, such as hotkeys and a back button. All of the relevant statistical data is available on demand. The main roster screen for each club contains a wealth of intelligence, detailing the team leaders in every major statistical category; a window with stats from all active players in the organization from the big club to the "A" ball farm team; lists of who's hot and who's not; and even the best line of the past seven days. Single clicks on the main menu bar take you to separate screens where you can tinker with the lineup and starting rotation, propose deals or place players on the trading block, fire and hire coaches and scouts, check out team news, and play with finances, which includes the new ability to schedule promotion days (bobblehead dolls, anyone?). A new e-mail system further keeps you in the know. It relays trade offers from other teams, reminders from players about their contract status, suggestions from minor-league managers on who should be promoted, and even gripes from disgruntled players issuing trade demands. Much of the complexity involved in operating a professional ball club has been broken down into component parts, allowing you to run things like a grizzled boardroom veteran in no time. It also lets you sidestep a lot of chores that could have dragged the game into micromanagement land.

The e-mail system keeps you informed about life on the farm.

Games can be simmed individually or in day-, week-, or season-long chunks. Simulation speed is nearly instantaneous for single contests, and an average computer can whir through an entire simmed season in less than 10 minutes. Games can also be played manually. This is handled via another clean and easy-to-use interface that lets you take on the full range of offensive and defensive bench boss duties. You make a managerial decision for every at-bat. Hitters are told to swing away, bunt, play the hit-and-run, and so on, while pitchers are instructed to go after an opponent, pitch away from him, or hand out an intentional walk. Defensive positioning is also an option in the latter case. How each at-bat turns out is depicted in a static picture of a ballpark and described in a text window directly beneath it. Playing a game is much like reading the transcript of a radio broadcast, albeit one in which you have a say over the outcome. Statistical results seem right on target. Everything plays out like you expect--including the actions of the opposing manager--with no wonky results that shake your suspension of disbelief. A few frills even bolster the illusion. For example, games take the weather into account. Cold, drizzly days lead to players slipping on the wet turf and committing errors. Arguing calls is possible as well, although this can lead to ejection and losing control over the rest of the game.

As mentioned earlier, some causes for concern make Season Ticket 2003 less than perfect. The biggest obstacle keeping it from being accepted by a mainstream audience is the absence of Major League Baseball and Major League Baseball Players Association licenses. Although there are plenty of fan Web sites out there with official rosters, team names, and logos for download, the game comes with fictional players and teams. Some gameplay issues are also evident. Most notably, there is no sound. Purists would claim that audio isn't necessary in a game like this, but anyone who's experienced APBA Baseball for Windows with Ernie Harwell's Broadcast Blast knows how much this feature adds to replaying games. Even some generic cheers and boos at appropriate times would be an improvement upon complete silence. Making matters worse is the subpar quality of the textual play-by-play. There is awkwardness and repetition in the lines, there are a few typos, and there is too much reliance on Scooter Rizutto-style catchphrases. Reading "Holy cow!" or "Oh man!" once an inning is a bit much.

Just a few complaints can be lodged over actual game mechanics. Crashes occasionally take place, apparently prompted by odd situations while manually playing games (wild pitches dropped us to the desktop three times). Heinsohn has yet to implement a pitch-by-pitch mode, so hard-core baseball season replayers will have to stick with the likes of Diamond Mind Baseball 8.0 for the time being. This of course limits strategic options while manually playing games, particularly in regard to setting up the hit-and-run and stealing, since you're simply given a count for each at-bat and then shown what happens. The contracts of managers and coaches cannot be renewed like those of players can, a particular annoyance when you consider that every third-rate utility man on your roster with an expiring deal sends you e-mail about re-upping through the season. However, one problem with the original Out of the Park Baseball 4 release has actually been cleared up. That game's irritating issue with obscuring part of the top menu bar unless you decreased the size of the Windows task bar has been cleared up by forcing Season Ticket 2003 to run in full-screen mode only. Unfortunately, this fix doesn't support hitting Alt-Tab to flip back to the desktop, a real annoyance when you consider how many players prefer to run management games like these in the background.

Pertinent factoids are found on each team's roster screen.

Aside from this partially welcome change, Season Ticket 2003 and Out of the Park Baseball 4 are nearly identical. Only the different splash screen, getting an actual CD and paper manual (which is nearly useless because of its brevity), and absence of the online-purchase game's challenge mode--an inconsequential option through which the game scores you for your successes and failures as a baseball boss--set Season Ticket apart from its predecessor. Oddly, the listed system requirements are higher here, though there doesn't appear to be any reason for this.

Not one of these rough edges is enough to cause any disenchantment with Season Ticket Baseball 2003 as a whole. The game is a remarkable simulation of running a big-league franchise from the front office to the field, with statistic generation, player movement, and fiscal considerations that are realistic in every way. Addictive as a single-player experience and flat-out irresistible while playing in an online league, it shouldn't be missed.