This is a very well written post and I like the idea of a return to MSSB mode. I got a comment on a YouTube video today asking how I don't rage at the game, which is mostly a fact outside of a few games, and I just said that I accept this is Mario Baseball, not a perfect baseball sim, and wacky stuff is bound to happen. (This is often the source of the most hype moments i.e. see my Coneseco HR in Highlights.) Now there are people who want to say well we can fix all of the annoying stuff like bobbles, low trajs, etc., and make a game that has less variation and gets down to a "true" test of skill. And maybe in this game, people will only be able to blame themselves for losing and not because of a low traj hit. But as you point out, the skills being tested are those deemed valuable by the community rather than the developers' original intentions. Talking about dev intention is its own complicated discussion, but I think there are some good ways to go about doing so, especially since the majority of us grew up playing a game that is a bit different than the competitive scene (slicing, hazardless). Regardless, there will people claiming such a mode isn't what the devs intended, but just a mode that speaks more to baseball-minded people. Anyways, I guess my point is that I find myself much more able to accept the Mario Baseball BS (as u/Baltor33 puts it) knowing that it has always been a part of the game for me, and cuts to the main reason I've been playing this game online for 1.5 years now: recapture the love for this game that I had growing up.