Monday's game against the Frontier League East Division-leading Kalamazoo Kings was the most important game in the brief history of the Lake Erie Crushers. If they would have lost the Kings not only would have owned the first tiebreaker in the battle for the division, they would have rolled out of Avon with a 4.5 game lead in the division race.

Tyler Johnson, signed a couple of weeks ago, turned the tide. The Crushers were cruising along, leading 2-0 behind five innings of no-hit pitching by starter Brent Lysander (son of former MLB pitcher and Senior League star Rick Lysander). Then the proverbial wheels fell off the wagon as Kalamazoo erupted for five runs in the top of the sixth.

Josh Short hit a deep home run well over the wall in left center to give the Kings a 3-2 lead. Jett Ruiz, Kyle Higgins and Bryan Marquez followed with back to back to back doubles to extend the lead to 5-2 and take a lot of the wind out of the sails of the 2,823 fans in attendance at All Pro Freight Stadium.

It didn't take very long for the fans to get on their feet again. Andrew Davis led off the bottom of the sixth with a double down the rightfield line. Gordie Gronkowski followed with a single before Eddie Tisdale, Sunday's hero, walked to load the bases.

Johnson, playing in just his 10th game for the Crushers, delivered. Brownell threw a first-pitch fastball that Johnson was sitting on. He smoked it between Short, the leftfielder, and centerfielder Brandon Anderson. It rolled to the base of the wall as all three runs scored.

While Johnson changed the momentum, Wayne Bond finished things off. Arden McWilliams bunted Johnson to third. Bond got the bunt sign on the first pitch of his at-bat and, with Johnson sprinting down the line, had to throw his bat at the ball to foul it off because, if he did not get a piece of it, Johnson would have been out at the plate by 30 feet.

Crushers manager John Massarelli put the squeeze bunt into the Lake Erie game plan earlier in the day. After Bond hammered the next pitch he saw halfway up the light pole in left field for a two-run blast, Massarelli might be thinking of taking the squeeze bunt back out of the game plan.

The Lake Erie bullpen, with Josh Faiola, Ronnie Morales and Jacinto Gonell, handled things from there. Amos Ramos took Faiola deep in the eighth, but that was all the Kings would get the rest of the way.

The Crushers took two of three from Kalamazoo for the second time in two weeks. They own the tiebreaker over the Kings. With 30 games left on the schedule they are 2.5 games back. Things are getting very interesting at All Pro Freight Stadium.