The arcade side of the coin is by the far the best looking baseball game on the market. The stadiums look dead on target, as do the players. What I found particularly pleasing about the player graphics is the attention to detail. The textured faces look remarkably good, and the player's body sizes correlate to their real life counterparts. What I found most impressive were the various subtle touches, like the way a particular player holds his bat, just like the real life player does.
Animation is very smooth, and there are a variety of camera angles to watch the game from.
Sound effects, though not as numerous as your average first person shooter, are well done as is the commentary by Thom Brennaman. Amazingly, the announcer sounds like he's really announcing a ball game and not repeating an endless sting of canned phrases. Baseball 2001 can be played with a keyboard, joystick, or gamepad, but favors the gamepad. Not having a gamepad I settled for playing with a joystick which worked fairly well. Barely moving my joystick would have my pitcher sending a fastball straight into the nosebleed seats.