Mat Taube singled in the winning run in the tenth inning as the Kitchener Panthers defeated the Toronto Maple Leafs 10-9 at Christie Pits on Wednesday night.

Curtis Young and Andy Pietraszky reached on base hits and Taube drove a two-out single into right field to score Young and make a loser of Toronto reliever Jon Lockwood.

Maple Leafs starter Rick Meinhold went six innings, charged with six earned runs on eight hits while striking out striking out five and walking one. Three Toronto pitchers went the rest of the way.

Toronto (5-4) managed 11 hits off four Kitchener relievers. Kern Watts led the way with four hits while Tony Lewis chipped in with two hits and a pair of RBIs.

Kitchener starter Brendan Farquhar went 6 1-3 giving up five earned runs on five hits while striking out six and walking two. Three Panthers pitchers went the rest of the way with Wes Koch getting the win with a scoreless tenth.

The Panthers (4-4) knocked out 15 hits with Taube collecting three hits and four RBIs and Mike Winter chipped in with three RBIs.

Kitchener raced out to a six-run lead but witnessed the Leafs fight back to tie the game in the ninth.

Meinhold faced the minimum in the first two innings but ran into trouble in the top of the third when the Panthers sent 10 men to the plate and scored six runs.

Jeff Pietraszko, Mike Andrulis and Taube collected RBI singles. Winter took Meinhold over the left field fence with a three-run homer. All the runs scored with two outs.

?I was still pitching my game,? Meinhold said. ?I got the first two out without any runs and then they got six consecutive hits?nobody really hit me hard until I left the change up and their guy golfed one out.?

The Leafs responded with two in the home half of the third.

Jon Fernandez walked, went to second on a Watts base hit, advanced to third on a pass ball and scored on the back half of a double steal. Watts advanced to third on another pass ball and scored when Farquhar balked him home.

?We tried to stay positive and chip away at the lead,? Toronto catcher Damon Topolie said. ?You can?t get them all back at once and you just try to win the rest of the innings.?

Toronto cut the lead to 6-3 in the home half of the fifth when Watts doubled and scored on a Dan Gibbons single to right field.

After the third, Meinhold found his groove again and faced one more than the minimum through six.

?I was pretty upset with how things worked out,? Meinhold said. ?I just knew that I had to shut it down and do the best I could for the next few innings. I went out there and tried to forget about it (third inning) and start over.?

?He just shook it off,? Topolie said. ?He started all over again and that?s what you want from you pitcher, a short term memory. He?s been in that situation before and he showed good composure.?

Kitchener manager Brian Bishop was ejected in the sixth for arguing a disputed call at first.

With Ron Robertson pitching, the Panthers added two in the seventh to make the score to 8-3.

The Leafs responded with four in the home half of the seventh to cut the lead to 8-7.

Watts led of the seventh with a single, Raul Borjas reached on an error and Gibbons singled to load the bases. Rob Gillis was hit by a pitch and Watts scored. Lewis singled to drive in Borjas and Gibbons and Gillis later scored on a pass ball.

Kitchener went ahead 9-7 in the top of the eighth but Toronto scored a single run in the eighth on a Topolie solo shot and completed the comeback when Gillis scored on a base hit by Brian Ivan in the ninth.

?We have a lot of guts and that?s exactly what you want in a team,? Topolie said. ?Nobody quit, everybody kept their heads up and played as hard as they could.?