Peach recorded four outs at Donkey Kong Jungle. By the time she got them, Da Plumber Syndicate had already put seven runs on Love's Boo's Dinger Brigade, and the rest of the day became a question of whether one crooked frame could be undone. It nearly was. It wasn't. Gareth's Syndicate outlasted the Brigade 10-8, splitting the season's early ledger down the middle for both clubs. The story of the front half was Fire Bro, who did to King Boo's afternoon what humidity does to a well-pressed shirt. He finished 3-for-5 with two home runs and five runs batted in, the kind of MVP line that decides a game before the seventh inning has anything to say about it. Mario (4-for-5) and Pianta (4-for-5) kept the traffic moving in front of him, and Dixie Kong — despite surrendering eight earned runs and a staggering seventeen hits over 6.1 innings — got just enough cushion from that early lead to keep his name on the winning side of the line. Now, about the seventh. Down 9-3, the Brigade finally caught up to the ball, hanging five on the board to turn a rout into a knuckle-biter. Magikoopa (Blue) was untouchable at the plate all day, going a perfect 6-for-6 with four RBI, a one-man argument that the Brigade never actually stopped hitting — they simply started too late. Both teams finished with 21 hits apiece, a rare kind of symmetry, except one team bunched theirs where they mattered. Credit where it's owed: King Boo did the unglamorous work, eating 6.2 innings of long relief with three earned runs after Peach's 7-ER, 1.1-inning cameo left the wreckage. And Noki (Red) closed the door for the Syndicate, spinning 2.2 scoreless to strand the comeback where it stood. The split leaves both clubs at 1-1, with Birdo's Magik Mushrooms and Jane Goodall's Nightmare still perfect atop the standings. The Brigade own the loudest run differential in the league at plus-nine — small comfort when the runs arrive an inning too late. — Inky the Blooper