Putting on a Show

David and I already are wearing shades, and our Cubs hats, and our Cubs jerseys. So we head inside. Somehow, we scored seats in the Richie Rich section, even though we are not of wealth.

David and I are on a mission to compare this real baseball game to a baseball video game later. To wit:

We sit behind the Cubs dugout and spy Carlos Zambrano, Derrek Lee and Lou Piniella. To my right, a pleasant father (Rolex) and teenage daughter (bejeweled flip-flops) know by name the scraggly haired guy selling drinks. They tip him well.

Eddie Vedder (beard, one-length hair, smiley) throws out the first pitch. The game starts. And it turns into a foul-ball day. Everyone on both teams seems to knock an errant ball into foul territory, constantly.

One foul ball lands a few feet behind us. A man catches it. A nearby boy smiles but looks disappointed. The crowd chants relentlessly, “Give it to the kid!” The man does not. They berate him. “Apparently,” I say to David, “this crowd hates adults.”

Wrigley looks familiar. The green wall. Billboard ads for beer, clothes and radio stations. Above left field, someone puts up a “K” sign every time a Cubs pitcher throws a strikeout. This gives me the creeps, seeing all the “KKK’s,” even if every other “K” is posted backward.

It’s the season of the Cubs, but the Cubs lose 6-2 to the Mets.

Immediately after, David and I play the Cubs (him) vs. the Mets (me) on the latest, high-definition version of “MLB ’07 The Show” for PlayStation 3.

David, an artist and illustrator, is impressed by the realism of “The Show’s” look and feel, the light and shade renderings on the crowd and most everything else arty, though the ivy seems “plastic-y.” There are no billboard ads for beer.

The pitchers, Zambrano for the Cubs and Orlando “El Duque” Hernandez for the Mets, look and pitch like the real deals. A backward “K” shows up on the TV screen when someone throws a strike.

Since the PS 3 doesn’t have a rumble hand controller, David and I can’t tell how to place a pitch as well as we can on the Xbox 360’s rumble controller. But we work around this and have a good game — if long at an hour-plus.

Since I am The Game Dork, I gain a big lead on David’s Cubbies. Playfully, he pitches a fastball at one of my Mets’ bodies intentionally.

“Doesn’t that feel nice?” I ask.

“Yeah, it does,” he says.

But it doesn’t help the final score, which he asks me not to print here, dejected (slightly) by an off day for his real and virtual Cubs.

“I’m baseballed out,” he says.

(“MLB ’07 The Show” retails for $60 for PS 3 and Xbox 360 — Plays fun, much more so than earlier-reviewed PS 2 and PSP versions. Looks great. Easy to challenging. Rated “E.” Three and one-half stars out of four.)