BSP gets huge pool play win over Brooklawn
EWING » Mason Fitzpatrick knows how to follow orders.
“Before I went out there for the seventh,” Fitzpatrick said, “(manager Mike Petrowski) said ‘You have 17 pitches left, make the most of them.”
He did just that, as the right-hander maxed out his pitch count in getting a strikeout with the tying run on second to clinch Broad Street Park’s 2-1 victory over Brooklawn in Sunday’s New Jersey American Legion Elite 8 pool game.
The victory puts BSP (22-5) at 2-0 in the American Division while Brooklawn (26-7) fell to 0-1. A win over Whitehouse Monday will guarantee a spot in the final four and the worst a loss would do is put BSP in the tie-breaker if there was a three-way tie at 2-1.
“I don’t even know how to put it into words,” said Fitzpatrick, who pitched a five-hitter with three walks and five strikeouts. “I just had to work ahead. Like (Petrowski) said before the game, they’ve been a powerhouse for ages. The past three years we’ve played them, we’ve always had close games that have been classic. He said today if we keep it close we’ll be able to win, that’s what we did.”
This one added to the list of classics, as BSP used a two-out rally for the winning run in the top of the sixth.
Broad Street manufactured a 1-0 lead in the second when Justin Wiltsey doubled, Jose Rodriguez sacrificed and Kiefer Goss squeezed Wiltsey home. Brooklawn tied it in the fifth when Anthony DiMartino walked, stole second and scored on Ryan Gray’s RBI single.
In the sixth, Post 72 hurler Mike Shannon, who was also stellar in firing a complete game, got the first two outs easily. That brought Mercer American Legion triple-crown winner Kyle Harrington to the plate in a pitch-around situation.
After swinging at a pitch outside the zone, Harrington drove a low, outside pitch to the rightfield fence for a triple. Wiltsey followed by grounding a single into left field for what proved to be the winning run.
“You saw that first pitch, I chased, I got a little anxious on it,” said Harrington, who was unsure if his winning hit came on a strike or not. “They were working around me; working around me. They were giving me some pitches here and there but nothing to really go after. The last pitch was there, I went out low and it carried for me. The ball was carrying out to right and it carried for me.”
That left it up to Fitzpatrick and his 17 pitches. After walking the leadoff batter, he induced a 5-4-3 double play. That proved big when he walked Anthony DiMartino. The count went to 2-2 on Gray before Fitzpatrick blew a fastball by to notch his third complete game and raise his record to 5-2.
“I kind of just let the fastball rip,” Fitzpatrick said. “I was just trying to spot up. There was more pressure on him than on me, that’s the tying run, not the winning run out there, so I had no pressure. I just had to throw strikes.”