ATWT Stars Batter Up for Charity
Stars of AS THE WORLD TURNS, ALL MY CHILDREN, GUIDING LIGHT and ONE LIFE TO LIVE came out to Brooklyn, N.Y., for the 9th Annual Tammy Rubin Rice Celebrity Softball Game on June 30, and it was Weekly‘s privilege to hang out in the dugout and not-so-subtly root for last year’s losers, CBS. (Come on, they were the underdogs!)
ATWT’s Mick Hazen and Daniel Manche (Parker and JJ) were among the first to arrive. They warmed up with a little catch, confident they would turn the tide for their network this year. Their Springfield neighbors Brian Gaskill (Dylan) and Bonnie Dennison (Daisy) soon showed up as well, joined by ATWT’s Ewa da Cruz (Vienna).
If you think Vienna dresses to kill onscreen, da Cruz manages to make sportswear look like haute couture, too. (Hardly fair on a sleepy Saturday morning.) The native Norwegian admitted she had never played softball before, but told Weekly, “I am stoked. What I’ve heard is that ABC picks out their very best people because they are here to win. CBS is here to win and maybe have more fun. I don’t even think I’m going to help them that much,” she laughed, sheepishly. (Actually, the novice would go on to contribute a few hits.)
When it came to paying attention to the game, Weekly slacked off (“Who’s winning?”), but it was definitely fun to shoot the breeze with various CBS and ABC stars between innings.
OLTL’s Tika Sumpter (Layla) — who sang a fantastic rendition of “The Star Spangled Banner” before the game — and her pal, AMC’s Chrishell Stause (Amanda), were pretty hilarious. “We’re like No. 11 and 12 in the batting order, so we don’t even know if we’re going to get up at bat,” laughed Sumpter.
“We’re going to cheer our team on. That’s what its really about,” assured Stause.
Unable to help herself, Sumpter chimed in with the thoroughly cheesy line, “Teamwork makes the dream work,” sending us all into hysterics.
Weekly found another kindred spirit in GL’s Marcy Rylan (Lizzie), who confided, “Last year I got out on the field — I had a mitt and everything. I stood out there and I thought, ‘I don’t play softball. Why am I out here?'”
The always-charming Rylan showed off some sparkly blue flip-flops that were definitely not made for running bases and confined herself to the dugout to cheer for her roommate, Alexandra Chando (Maddie, ATWT).
The CBS squad included the newly returned Agim Kaba (Aaron, ATWT), who grinned when questioned about getting to ride Aaron’s motorcycle. “They keep giving me bigger ones,” he noted, still trying to keep an eye on the field while he took a breather. “You don’t want to leave a running motorcycle in an enclosed space,” he sighed of being allowed to zoom around the studio.
Ultimately, CBS zoomed around the field, though, beating ABC, 13-12. “I heard CBS has gotten spanked for the past five years. We had to do something about that,” grinned a victorious Hazen. “Everyone played well.”
But soap fans and the Shorefront Friends For Hospice went home the real winners.
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