Seven runs. After two weeks of staring at a scoreboard that gave them nothing but a column of clean zeros, Ylander's Weed Sox walked into Peach Garden on Sunday and actually put crooked numbers up — a big, loud six-spot in the third that had the visitors' dugout looking, briefly, like a first-place club. It was the kind of inning a season turns on. It just wasn't the club it turned for. Boo's Dinger Brigade won it 10-7, and the strange part is that they did it while getting out-hit 18 to 15. That is the math of a game where the losing side collects the paper and the winning side collects the outs that matter. Love's crew scattered runs across the afternoon like breadcrumbs — two in the first, one in the second, three in the third, and a little more whenever the Weed Sox got too comfortable — and never once trailed after the opening frame. The pitching line tells you exactly where the game was decided, and it was not with the starters. King Boo, so magnificent in last year's semifinal, gave the Brigade all of two innings and four earned runs before handing it off. Boo, wearing the other jersey, was worse — four and a third, seven earned, eleven hits scraped off him like paint. Both starters were essentially batting-practice arms in Boo costumes. Then Daisy took the ball. What she did with it was the whole story. Six and two-thirds innings of relief, seven strikeouts, zero earned runs — she came in to a burning building and calmly turned off the gas. And because a Blooper keeps his eyes open, note that Daisy also went 3-for-5 with two RBI at the plate, which is how you win an MVP: by beating a team twice in one uniform. King Boo, freed from the mound, hit like a man who preferred it that way, going 4-for-5. Hammer Bro chipped in two more RBI. The Weed Sox will drive home wondering how you get eighteen hits and lose. Paratroopa in red went 4-for-5, Paragoomba and Koopa Troopa each added three knocks, and the offense that had been a rumor for two weeks finally showed up in the flesh. But you know the running theory on this club by now — the boys favor a certain pregame relaxation, and a lineup that hits singles all day and can't string the big blow together in the tall, unforgiving walls of Peach Garden is a lineup that leaves the yard empty and the bases fuller than the scoreboard. So the ledger reads 0-3 for Ylander now, alone at the bottom, while Boo's Dinger Brigade climb to 2-1 and stay in the conversation behind Birdo's still-perfect Magik Mushrooms. The Weed Sox found their bats on Sunday. Now they just have to find a win before the calendar runs out of patience. — Inky the Blooper