Image courtesy of EA Sports Arizona's Sancet Stadium is one of 19 authentic stadiums in EA Sports MVP 06 NCAA Baseball video game. Designed by 1998 Arizona graduate Ben Brinkman, it's the first college baseball game on the market.

Even in virtual reality, baseball is still a fickle game.

"The other day, someone said I was 3-for-3 with a home run," senior second baseman Brad Boyer said. "The next day, I was 0-for-2 with two strikeouts."

Boyer isn't referring to his real life statistics but rather the performance of his virtual self in the new EA Sports MVP 06 NCAA Baseball game, released last week for the PlayStation 2 and Xbox game consoles.

"It just goes to show you how baseball is a game of failure," Boyer said. "Each day is a little different."

The game - which is the first of its kind for collegiate baseball - was produced by 1998 Arizona graduate Ben Brinkman.

"When we set out to build the game, we wanted to definitely differentiate it from anything we'd done in the past with the Major League Baseball game," said Brinkman, who worked in the Arizona athletics department as an assistant in the sports information office from 1996 to 1998, covering tennis and swimming.

"We wanted to have its own feel to it," he said.

It's about time they had a college baseball (video) game. Jason Donald junior shortstop

Brinkman, a media arts graduate, said he made sure to include all the rules of collegiate baseball - for example, there are no take-out slides or home plate collisions - as well as its quirks, including the ping of the aluminum bats and more team celebration.

Arizona head coach Andy Lopez said he thinks that the game will help to place college baseball on the same level as college football or basketball.

"I think it will be sweet for college baseball," he said. "It merits it. My boys are excited. My boys are into all that stuff.

"I think it's going to be great for the program," Lopez added. "Our guys will go on the road and bring their stuff and play it. I have a funny feeling that the guys on the club will probably purchase it."

Lopez wasn't far off the mark as the Wildcats were excited to be portrayed in the game.

"Oh, I'm definitely buying it," senior outfielder Derek Decater said last week, when the video game was released to the public. "I'm going to go pick it up. It will be interesting (to see how I play on the game). It should be a lot of fun."

Even those on the team who weren't video game junkies were excited to see what it would be like to have their likeness portrayed onscreen.

"I don't play video games, but I'll go and watch somebody play it," junior shortstop Jason Donald said. "It's pretty cool though I think. It's about time they had a college baseball game."

Featured on the back cover of the game in his Arizona uniform is Trevor Crowe, last year's Pacific 10 Conference co-Player of the Year for the Wildcats and a first round draft pick of the Cleveland Indians in June's Major League Baseball draft.

"It's a great honor to be on such a thing, but it's just kind of the strides you take in life," he said. "I got fortunate."

Brinkman said the players' names are not depicted in the game because of their amateur status, but the numbers and the skill sets of the players in the game match their actual abilities.

Brinkman said he contacted the Arizona athletics department's director of marketing and licensing, James Francis, to get photos and images of Sancet Stadium so that the game would be an almost identical replica of the actual stadium.

"(Francis) provided us with some awesome assets for the game," Brinkman said.

Arizona's Sancet Stadium is one of 19 authentic collegiate stadiums in the game, joining Stanford's Sunken Diamond, ASU's Packard Stadium and Omaha's Rosenblatt Stadium, the site of the College World Series, in true-to-life form.

Sancet's recent renovations are also included in the game, including the video replay board and banner honoring Arizona's College World Series teams on the right field wall. The stadium's new lawn seating, on both the third and first base sides, is also included, and Arizona Stadium and McKale Center are both clearly visible in the background.

"Being an alumni of the U of A, I really wanted to put Sancet Field in there because obviously it has a place close to my heart, and Arizona is one of the top baseball programs in the country," Brinkman said.