Sometimes, baseball is more important than country music.

With a 12-0 win over Salisbury Tuesday, the Northern Valley Chargers clinched the seventh-seed in the Lehigh Valley Legion Tournament, but it could wind up costing coach Brad Rauch dearly. With his team now in the playoffs, he needs all hands-on-deck, but might have been without two key players Josh Williamson and Taylor Breininger Saturday, should the Chargers go deep enough into the playoffs. The two had tickets to see country music star Eric Church in Philadelphia Saturday, so Rauch came up with a plan. He promised the two that if they play Saturday, he would give them the tickets he bought for his wife to see Church in concert at the Allentown Fair, much to the chagrin of his unknowing wife.There's a lot that has to happen between now and then, but the fact that Northern Valley is officially in the playoffs for the fifth straight season was the first step. They missed a chance to clinch a spot Monday when they lost the conclusion of a suspended game against Fullerton. That loss meant that Northern Valley had to square off Tuesday, with the winner locking up the seventh seed and the loser having to play Fullerton tonight for the last playoff spot."It was a good game today. I wish that we would have had the intensity that we had today all year long," said Rauch. "We had a lot of up and down games. I don't want to say that we didn't care, it was just a lot of bad days, had a lot of guys banged up and had a lot of guys out of position."Today, we had guys out of position, but I challenged them and said 'our regular season is 18 games. This is not a regular season game, this is a playoff game. For us, the playoffs start today.'"The Chargers struck hard in the second inning against Salisbury starter Tristan Rissmiller. John Taylor led off with a ground-rule double and Evan Meixell followed with a perfect bunt that Rissmiller threw away, allowing Taylor to score. Another error put Meixel on third and a sacrifice fly from Travis Nelmes made it 2-0. From there, Northern Valley strung together three singles, two walks and a triple from Ben Cordova to build a commanding 7-0 lead.But Northern Valley wasn't finished offensively as Meixel tripled to lead off the third and scored on an RBI single from Zachary Rex. More hitting and weak fielding from Salisbury allowed the Chargers to stretch the lead to 11-0 after three. In the fourth, Nelmes capped the scoring with a long home run to left field and a 12-0 advantage.Taylor threw all five innings for Northern Valley, allowing just three hits, a walk and a hit batter, while striking out six.Northern Valley will have an off day Wednesday before opening the playoffs Thursday at Parkland High School against second-seed South Parkland. The Chargers lost both meetings with South Parkland during the regular season, by scores of 7-1 and 8-3."Before the game, the coach talked to us and told us we have to work together as a team, pick each other up, and play at 212, which our old coach, Gary Andrew taught us. With that energy, we came out and we all teed off," said Meixell, of the analogy his former coach, who passed away two years ago, passed on to his players.The 212 is a reference to the boiling point of water and Andrew's message was that if someone is off, it puts the team below the boiling point. The Chargers were definitely boiling on Tuesday and hope to keep the heat coming deep into the playoffs. Of course, if they go too deep into the playoffs, it may put their coach in hot water with his wife.Salisbury 000 00 - 0 3 5Northern Valley 074 1x - 12 12 2Rissmiller, Bishop (2), Bonilla (4) and Benitez; Taylor and Salerno. W - Taylor. L - Rissmiller. HR - Northern Valley - Nelmes (4th, none on).