Mario Baseball coming to the Gamecube

Forget the boys of summer, it's the short, fat Italian plumbers of summer!

The mustachioed one returns for about the millionth time. This time, Mario and friends take on the sadly neglected sport of baseball. And if there's one sport that needs fat plumbers and strange creatures with long tongues, it has to be baseball.

Not much is known beyond a few screenshots, but if you've played any other Mario title outside of the usual run'n'jump games, you're more than likely able to figure out what sort of gameplay will be on hand. It will be a hardcore baseball sim for Bill James and sabermetrics fanatics. Just kidding, it will obviously be arcade fun. Well, fun if you like arcade baseball anyway.

One thought springs to mind. Not being a Mario fan, are there 18 recurrent characters, enough to fill two baseball teams?