All-Star Baseball 2005 features a variety of things that most previous versions did not include, such as classic players like Babe Ruth, Yogi Berra and others. Apart from each of the MLB teams, the game also features teams made up with legends of different eras and the 2004 American and National league teams. One particular game characteristic is that it includes the Montreal Expos, who relocated from Montreal to Washington D.C. and changed their name to the Washington Nationals for the 2005 MLB season.
The game includes all thirty stadiums as of the 2004 season, as well as other fictional and non-fictional ball parks to bring the total to over eighty parks. Some of these parks include: the Polo Grounds used by the then New York Giants (the New York Yankees played their home games there as well from 1913-1922); the Houston Astrodome; Hiram Bithorn Stadium used by the Montreal Expos in their final season; retro, current and future versions of Fenway Park, Yankee Stadium, Shea Stadium and Dodger Stadium.
Barry Bonds does not appear in All-Star Baseball 2005, because he is not a member of the Major League Baseball Players Association however Bonds is talked about by Brennaman and Lyons in an in-game conversation on why pitchers should not be allowed to win the MVP Award. Steve Lyons says, "You will never see Barry Bonds win the Cy Young Award." Instead, the San Francisco Giants have a make believe player named "Wes Mailman". "Mailman" actually announces himself on one of the billboards at the Philadelphia Phillies home games. The game does feature play by play commentary by Arizona Diamondbacks television broadcaster Thom Brennaman and former major league player Steve Lyons, who sometimes offers long answers to Brennaman's questions during games.
Source: Wikipedia, "All-Star Baseball 2003", available under the CC-BY-SA License.
