Me, 46; Schileens, 5

It's my birthday today. The kids gave me their little cards this morning: J drew a cartoon heart that explained that it loved me. E created a computer-generated card filled with pictures of Bush being an idiot. Oh, and he added he loved me. One goes for the heart, one goes for the humor.

More importantly: we beat Schileens, the 2nd place team in the league! This is the team that allegedly used the illegal bat last season (which led to the meeting, which led to the sex conversation in the archives). They hate us, they're loud and last night they were particularly grumpy. The ump, a nice, elderly gentleman, had a pretty inconsistent strike zone, and both the other pitcher and I were equally affected. They stood behind the backstop and whined at every pitch they thought was called incorrectly.

My theory is: it always pays to be nice to the umps, especially when they're grey.

So we just boomboomboom hit little singles here and there, hard shots, pokes, line drives...it's like we were playing in an alternative universe. We never do that. Had one good inning, and that's all we needed. They couldn't catch up, and they lost. When the game ended and we came off the field, we didn't whoop and holler, nosir. We just coolly walked off, like we play like this every day. Ok, I was smiling a little.

And then we went out and had beer and chocolate cake shots, a tasty way to celebrate a birthday AND a win.