‘MLB The Show’ let me create a monster. Now I’m in love with my short king
Shoeless Joe Stubbs is a legend in my own mind.
I never get hooked when it comes to the spate of “Be a Pro” modes in sport video games. Typically I dabble enough for a review, see if something piques my interest, then get bored and go back to simply playing as pro teams.
MLB The Show 25 changed all that for me thanks to one, glorious, beautiful man: Shoeless Joe Stubbs.
You haven’t heard of Shoeless Joe Stubbs?! The pride of Arizona. The Norwegian Nightmare. Shoeless Joe just made it into the pros after a meteoric rise through AA and AAA ball to become one of the hottest players in all of MLB — and easily the most-exciting international prospect since Shohei Ohtani.
Stubbs also managed to do all this despite being 5’1 and 220 pounds. He’s an inspiration.
While MLB The Show has always been pretty fast and loose with its creation options, I’ve never been able to push it to this extreme before. With painstaking detail I got to imagine a world where Gimli from The Lord of the Rings decided the fellowship of the ring wasn’t for him, and decided to hit dingers instead. Sports games obviously allow you to adjust height and weight, but there’s always guard rails. NBA 2K for instance won’t let you create a player below 5’9 — knowing that anything smaller would be preposterous.
Not here though. My strike zone is down in the damn dirt, just the way I like it.
It’s allowed me to fashion my own fan fiction around how this man managed to make it all the way to the bigs despite being built like a Galapagos tortoise. To be honest, it’s needed — because despite the gameplay being great, Road to the Show is very light on story. It’s one of my principal disappointments with the mode overall, but I just can’t stop coming back because of how my head canon has shaped Shoeless Joe Stubbs into an icon.
I captured his first time in a hotel. Stubbs just stands there because he doesn’t know what bed is.
Also his suitcase is almost half his size, which I have to imagine is intimidating for my short king. Easily the best part of playing like this are the cut scenes before and after games. It’s either utterly hilarious:
Or the whole thing breaks and it totally changes his proportions because technology is forced to reject Shoeless Joe in all his glory.
There’s something simply wonderful about seeing the most unathletic body type in history being framed as the most hyped athlete in the history of baseball. Right now I’m midway through my first season being called up and lead the Diamondbacks in batting average, RBIs, and Home Runs. It’s only a matter of time before big money starts rolling in.
I’m a simple man with a simple aim now: Earn more money in my career than the GDP of Norway. I’ll probably get bored long before that, but for now I’m just relishing in the absurd and loving every minute of it.