Well, sometimes, the game just lets you have it for free.

I had been attempting the Peach IL for hours and for the life of me could not finish a run due to missing Peach's Big Play mission. In one attempt, I finished the Wario match at around 26 minutes and then proceeded to try and get Big Play continuously against Bowser's team for 25 minutes, and didn't get it a single time.

On this run, the game gave me a pretty simple-to-grab sliding catch on literally my first pitch thrown. That meant I could start Peach as a pitcher early, letting her get 5 Strikeouts, MVP, and Pitch and Bat with the Heart Ball and Win ahead of schedule, which in turn made the Bowser match much less stressful than it otherwise could have been.

On top of that, my batting overall was extremely good. The 2-inning DK was a little unfortunate, but because I have to get 5 Strikeouts at some point in the run, it wasn't actually a bad thing- Peach was ready to, and did, take advantage of the opportunity. You cannot finish a Peach IL in fewer than 6 innings. I finished it in 6 innings (with only a single hit scored against me the entire run!) They were not perfect innings; bunt-based scoring strategies would definitely have saved time and my defense was powered by slower-but-safer strikeouts rather than pitching to contact against weak hitters, which can be significantly faster if you're lucky.

Still, the sheer stupid luck of getting Peach Big Play done so early gave me a chance to do some incredible work, and I'm extremely happy with this result. Never say never and all that, but I might not do another Peach run after this if this time isn't beaten. This run legitimately is that good (and this category is legitimately not very much fun to play given the combination of any% speed pressures and no small amount of favorable defense RNG needed just to finish).

Also, did I mention that this obsoleted my PB in any% Special difficulty by over seven minutes? Haha. Oh, Peach.