PEARL — One minute, the Vicksburg Gators were locked in a tense duel with Pearl to keep their division title hopes alive.

The next, they were trudging back toward a bus that had already seemed to squash them like a bug.

Pearl blew open a close game by scoring 11 runs in the fourth inning — all with two outs — and stomped the Gators 13-1 on Tuesday night.

The teams play again Friday at Bazinsky Field, but it’s a largely meaningless game. Pearl (15-3, 7-0 Division 4-5A) clinched the division championship with Tuesday’s win, and no matter what happens Vicksburg (4-9, 3-3) still needs to beat Callaway to finish second.

“The beauty of baseball is, you’ve got the next day,” Vicksburg coach Derrick DeWald said. “We’ll go back to work tomorrow. You can’t get mad. We played hard. We just didn’t have things go our way. At the end of the night, that’s baseball. We’ll be OK.”

Vicksburg has given up at least seven runs in each of its nine losses, but this one didn’t seem to be heading that way at first.

Pearl struck for two runs in the bottom of the first inning, then the Gators got one back on Marcus Williams’ RBI single in the second.

The score stayed 2-1 into the fourth inning, and the Gators got the first two outs. Then everything that could go wrong, did.

Dalton Sullivan sneaked an RBI single through the left side of the infield. Andrew Ryals followed that up by slamming a bases-clearing double into left field to make it 6-1, and the rout was on.

The Pirates wound up sending 22 batters to the plate. Eight of those reached base via a walk or hit by pitch.

Pearl scored two runs when, with runners on first and third, Oren Myrick drew a walk. Ball four got past the catcher to bring the runner in from third. Myrick tried to go to second during the chaos, the throw down went into center field, and River Weghorst wound up scoring from first.

Hayden Moore hit a two-run triple, Sullivan came up again and delivered an RBI bunt single, and the Gators made two pitching changes before they were finally able to kill the rally.

“I have no answer on that. Not getting a couple of calls on pitches got our pitcher frustrated, and once he got frustrated and they got a timely hit it opened up the floodgates,” DeWald said. “We’ve got to find a way to get over the hump. That’s the bottom line.”