The Times Herald (Norristown, PA)
Harleysville
Dante Bruno (38) and Trevor Valentine (20) helped Harleysville defeat Fort Washington Wednesday. reached base including RBI doubles from Aidan Sweeney and Moyer and RBI singles from Michael Salter and Tyler Southand, who was a late call-up as the team’s ninth man.
“You can’t score runs without getting hits,” Harleysville infielder Trevor Valentine said. “We came out aggressive tonight.”
After plating five runs in the first, the Hornets went ahead 6-0 when Bruno doubled in Valentine in the second. Valentine reached base four times and scored four times as the biggest beneficiary of the batters behind him.
On Monday, Harleysville gave up a large early lead to Montgomery only to claw within a run before the called strikeouts cost them a chance to finish the rally. In the bottom half of the second, Fort Washington seemed to have the same idea of getting back in the game.
After a run scored on a wild pitch, shortstop Leo Soriano hit a tworun single before scoring on Aidan McCarthy’s RBI double as the Commodores got within 6-4. McCarthy had a strong game, going 3-for-4 with two RBIs.
“I was just waiting back and seeing the pitch all the way through,” McCarthy said. “We got a lot of baserunners on, we just couldn’t score enough to keep up.”
The problem for Fort wasn’t so much men on base or getting them home but stopping Harleysville from doing the same. Walks and miscues ended up very costly for the home team in the third inning as the Hornets took the counterpunch and responded with six runs without registering
a hit.
Harleysville’s first three batters walked, keyed by free passes earned from No. 8 and 9 hitters Salter and Southand before a wild pitch and error scored a pair. With the bases again loaded, Bruno bagged his second sac fly of the game with three more runs coming in off Moyer’s bat, a passed ball and a wild pitch.
“It was next man up,” Valentine said. “We only had the guys here, so we all needed to play our best.”
“We needed to rally in that inning and get some more runs,” Bruno said. “They started coming back and we didn’t have some of our top pitching available tonight.”
Moyer and Bruno accounted for all three RBIs in the top of the fourth with Bruno’s two-run rope to deep right-center putting Harleysville ahead 15-8.
Once again, the Commodores showed they weren’t going to just roll over. Billy Brightcliffe led off with a single while Chase Trimm’s one out single not only drove in a run, it kicked off three straight base knocks ending with an RBI single from McCarthy.
Tim Saiber, who struck out five batters in 1 2/3 innings of work, added a sac fly and a wild pitch got Fort within 15-8 before the inning ended and the game came to a close.
“They hit the ball pretty well but we came back,” McCarthy said. “We hit that second wave, I guess you could say in that last inning. The Sun kind of gave out on us, but we got it going there.” Harlesyville 15,
Ft. Washington 8
Harleysville Fort Washington 2B: 51630—15102 04004— 8 83
H – Dante Bruno 2, Calvin Radcliffe, Aidan Sweeney, Garrett Moyer; FW – Aidan McCarthy.