Dozens of soap actors found a highly deserving "charity base" on a muggy but mostly rainless Saturday, June 5, as the Shorefront Friends for Hospice's Sixth Annual Tammy Rubin Rice Celebrity Softball Game pit CBS against ABC for seven friendly innings. The voluntary organization, which provides supportive health services for the terminally ill, brought much life to Brooklyn's Midwood High School Football Field, as Oakdale and Springfield faced off with Llanview and Pine Valley. While the game (which honors Tammy Rubin Rice, who passed away from breast cancer) got increasingly heated — and drew to a thrilling close of CBS beating ABC, 12-11 — Weekly spoke with several familiar faces.

Jay Wilkison (Riley, ONE LIFE TO LIVE) beamed, "It was a good day. It was a lot of fun. I wanted a home run; I didn't get one. I got the RBIs, so that was great. I try to play a lot." He added that Riley's romance with Jen has pleased him: "Oh, I'm loving it. I'm having a good time. I just wish it would be a little more."

Thrilled to be part of the fun was Wilkison's co-star Nathaniel Marston (Michael), who was recovering from a major foot injury, and glad to be outside instead of stuck at home. He was also somewhat dejected: "[Last year when I didn't make it here] I was healthy and I could have played; here I am now injured, and I made it." He commiserated with Deborah Zoe (ex-Eden, GUIDING LIGHT), who had broken her wrist snowboarding.

Fellow OLTL star Bree Williamson had her own emotional time, as her character, Jessica, had to face Viki's near-death and heart transplant. "It was easy to cry and feel upset about it, because Erika Slezak's wonderful. To see her like that, it was [hard]." She noted that Slezak didn't crack jokes from her bed in between taping scenes. "It was really, really, really heavy, important stuff, so it was very quiet, very subdued, very professional, extremely serious. After work, she makes it very light."

A few GUIDING LIGHT stars brightened the slightly gloomy day. Justin Klosky (Joey) noted his personal success in the game: "I got a couple of hits and a pop-fly catch in the outfield. It was a good game. Most important part is our CBS team [won]." He added his viewpoint on Joey's off-and-on relationship with Tammy: "I love it. The changes that have been going on; the new head writer, the executive producer, things have been taking steps in amazing directions. I'm looking forward to the summer and the stories that have been progressing." Unfortunately, one progression — Joey learning of Tammy's kissing Edmund — recently caused the couple to split. "It's sad and it happens," Klosky notes. "It's a storyline that reflects truth in real life. It happens to a lot of kids; I know it happened to me when I was 18. At 18 you don't listen, and he won't understand for a few years." But for now, there's hope: "Edmund and Cassie are very supportive of my relationship with Tammy."

After a solid hit, Tammy's portrayer, Stephanie Gatschet, slammed into the first baseman, OLTL's answer to American Idol's "JPL": John-Paul Lavoisier (Rex). Thrilled to be at the game, the actor noted that although he got his team's first hit, he hadn't touched a bat since last year's event — "I play once a year, [but] I play a lot of golf; no catching involved in that game, though" — and that he had "talked trash" against CBS for months. Was he the main instigator against the other network? "I think maybe, although I think Nathaniel got quoted in one of the magazines, talking some trash." (That happened to be in a preview of the game in Weekly's Personal Appearances section.) Rex's heated pairing with Lindsay is anything but garbage to Lavoisier: "I like it a lot; it's good. And in about a month or so, there will be two women that he sort of plays around with a little bit, so it's very interesting."

Kamar de los Reyes' OLTL character, Antonio, has been delighting groups of women at a time, in his undercover stripper work. As for how he learned of the new challenge, he said, "They just came in and told me, 'Antonio's going undercover.' I said, 'What, as a bartender...?' They said, 'Noooo, as a stripper.' There's enough bartender jobs out there, you know? (laughs) I have a dance background from my school years, so I apply that."

As OLTL's Eddie Alderson (Matthew) gave his sister and co-star Kristen (Starr) a few hitting tips, Agim Kaba (Aaron, AS THE WORLD TURNS) enthused about the game, "It's great; it was fun. We took control and we won...me and my CBS team."

His girlfriend, Elizabeth Hendrickson (Maggie, ALL MY CHILDREN), talked about her own AMC "team" — her, Eden Riegel, Justin Bruening and Alexa Havins (Bianca, Jamie and Babe) — having an atypical acting challenge. "Recently we had a drink on the show; we were drinking O'Doul's at 8 o'clock in the morning (laughs). That was a really interesting experience for all of us; it was warm O'Doul's, early in the morning. Trying to play a little buzz — it's difficult. I think I'd rather have the [beer-colored] water. So we had a lot of fun with it. That was one of the first times I got to have a scene with [Alexa]; we're becoming close friends now." Riegel, who sang the National Anthem, is also getting to know Havins: "I can tell you we're both taking the same train right now. We see each other working out every day." On her baby storyline, she added, "It's so huge. I love everything that they've given me so far."

Organizer Heather Regina enthused, "The event raised $9,000 this year. Each year more and more actors attend and we are more successful than the year before. The daytime actors are incredibly generous with their time; without their support we wouldn't have an event. It's because of them that Tammy Rubin Rice's name lives on!"