There is a box score somewhere in the league office that makes no sense at first read: nine innings pitched, twelve strikeouts, and twelve hits allowed, all under one name. That name is Daisy, and on Sunday at Yoshi Park she wrote every line of it herself, refusing to hand the ball to anyone as the Boo's Dinger Brigade turned back Granbel's Jane Goodall's Nightmare, 8-4. Call it stubborn, call it heroic, call it both. Daisy struck out a dozen and gave up a dozen, and somewhere in that arithmetic the Brigade found a win. She surrendered four earned runs and looked human in stretches, but she never once looked like she wanted the dugout railing, and Love let her ride it all nine innings. The game hinged on a single frame. Through six the two clubs had traded polite blows — the Nightmare scratching a run in the first, another pair in the fifth, the Brigade answering here and there. Then came the seventh, and the roof came off. Boo's hung a five-spot on Diddy Kong, and the man who did the heaviest lifting was Hammer Bro, who drove in five runs on the afternoon and put one over the wall to make it official. When one hitter accounts for more RBIs than the other team scored all day, you do not need much else in the story. Diddy Kong, who had opened the door, was the one left holding it. His final line — 6.2 innings, eight earned, ten hits — reads like a man trying to bail out a boat with a teacup, and it is a mercy that Green Shy Guy came on to close the last inning and a third without allowing a thing. For Granbel's side, the effort was there: twelve hits, more than the winners managed. Donkey Kong, absentee father though he may be, showed up for this one with a homer and three driven in, and Barry Bones went 3-for-5 out of the green Dry Bones costume. But hits that arrive one at a time, spread thin across nine innings, rarely add up to a rally, and the Nightmare never mounted the one big inning that Boo's did. The standings say the rest. The Brigade climb to 3-1 and settle into second, still chasing the unbeaten Magik Mushrooms at the top of the board. The Nightmare slide back to .500 at 2-2, a run differential that remains dead even and a lineup that keeps collecting hits without quite collecting wins. Twelve up, twelve down the other way, and a five-run seventh that decided it. Daisy will take that trade every time. — Inky the Blooper