Playwright Eric Simonson is becoming a specialist in plays having to do with real-life sports icons. His “Lombardi” played a healthy run at Broadway’s Circle in the Square Theater in 2010-11, and “Magic/Bird”, about basketballers Magic Johnson and Larry Bird, ran at the Longacre in 2012.

Now Simonson’s back with his third sports drama, “Bronx Bombers”, about the fabled (and controversial) New York Yankees. Centering on Yogi Berra, the show also brings to life everyone from Babe Ruth to Billy Martin. Previews began Jan. 10 for an opening last night (Feb. 6) at Circle in the Square.

In the midst of the Olympics and nearly two months before the Dodgers and Diamondbacks have their first pitch, did theater critics warm to the crack of the bat and the old ballgame?

Theatermania’s David Gordon loved the opening scene but faults the show for going downhill from there: “While [playwright Eric] Simonson has improved the first act to more appropriately set up the second, the concept, fun as it is as each Yankee player arrives, lacks dramatic heft.” Gordon wishes more were made of the friction between Billy Martin and Reggie Jackson and ends his review noting, “the era was rife with dramatic tension. It's too bad that Bronx Bombers has exceedingly little.”

Daily News critic Joe Dziemianowicz gave the show a triple – er, three stars – and agrees with Gordon that between the show’s off-Broadway debut and Broadway move, “The central tension — a perennial Yankee saga about team tradition versus personal stardom — is better illuminated.” However, he gripes that “Bronx Bombers” is “choked by sentiment” as “the promising provocative talk of the opening innings gets benched for mushier hero worship and backward glances at glory days.” “When all is said and done,” Dziemianowicz opines, “`Bronx Bombers’ is too feel-good and fawning for its own good.”

Variety’s Marilyn Stasio opens with a laugh: “So what’s next – golf?” But she seriously appreciates Beowulf Boritt’s set and the ideological battle between Martin and Jackson. However, she calls “BB” “a play that’s noticeably lacking in drama” and openly wonders if there’s enough of an audience interested in the subject matter to keep “Bronx” from bombing on Broadway.

In her ** review, USA Today’s Elysa Gardner reads like she’d rather be in Sochi, griping that the second act drags and that the play covers changing times “with predictable obviousness and heavy-handedness.”

Mark Kennedy, writing for the Associated Press, was surprised by the show’s veering from “unremarkable, behind-the-scenes” clubhouse drama to its surreal second-act look at Yankee heroes. He notes that the play has been tweaked since its off-Broadway premiered, “but not enough to make it more than Yankee advertising.” Kennedy calls Peter Scolari’s performance as Yogi Berra “super” but ends the review with the definitive, “the play strikes out looking.”

The New York Post’s Elisabeth Vincentelli musters only two stars for the drama and is disappointed to find Scolari playing Yogi “as a doddering holy fool.” She also sighs, “What’s more amazing than dead players chatting over hors d’oeuvres is that a show about a team with such a backlog of personalities, controversies and scandals could be so dull. No George Steinbrenner, no Red Sox, no juicing — no drama.”

Newsday’s Linda Winer is slightly more appreciative, calling the show “mildly diverting.” Like Gardner and AP’s Mark Kennedy, she raises an eyebrow at Simonson’s sports plays being sanctioned (and partially bankrolled) by the major sports leagues, which lends a certain “reverential” tone to the goings on – or, as she calls it, “sports-niche theater.” “For those of us who don’t much care,” she japes, “designer David C. Woolard amuses us with the changing styles of the uniforms.”

Going with the prevailing sentiment about the play’s sentimentality is New York Times scribe Charles Isherwood, who compliments the first act by noting, “The drama inherent in clashing egos gives `Bronx Bombers’ some natural juice in the early innings.” He’s not as keen on act two but allows that “Yankee lovers may not find this sudden lurch into fantasy particularly worrisome.”

“Sharpened but still dubiously crafted,” writes NBC New York’s Robert Kahn, “`Bronx Bombers’ is a jock drama that will appeal to any Yankees fanatic but leave others restless in the bleachers.” Though other critics have maligned the second act, Kahn appreciates the “enjoyable exchanges between players that could only exist in a writer’s mind,” but he, too, chastises the show’s “maudlin elements,” adding that “seasoned theatergoers will take umbrage at the heavy-handed storytelling and rampant fanboyism.”

“It’s just not a very good play,” NY1’s Roma Torre writes, “though Peter Scolari’s wonderful portrayal is a home run.” Calling the work disjointed, Torre ends her critique with a hardball: “theatrically speaking, it strikes out.”