Sharpley guides Broad Street Park to state semis
EWING » When starting pitchers are left in a game after a two-hour rain delay, managers can only hope they maintain a little of what they had before the break.
Defying all logic, Tim Sharpley got even better.
Sharpley showed why he is the Mercer County American Legion Pitcher of the Year on Monday, as he pitched Broad Street Park to a 4-1 win over Whitehouse to clinch first place in the American Division of New Jersey American Legion Elite 8 play.
By going 3-0 in pool play, BSP will meet the winner of Tuesday’s Hopewell-Washington game Wednesday night, 7 p.m. at Moody Park in a semifinal matchup.
Sharpley, who got three strikeouts and 12 harmless outs in the air, allowed three hits and a hit batsman in the first four innings. He was given a 3-0 lead in the top of the fifth before the rains came and everyone sat for two hours except for Mike Ryan’s outstanding grounds crew. Surprisingly, Sharpley returned and allowed his only two baserunners on consecutive singles in the sixth.
“I was really going back and forth about bringing Sharp back out,” manager Mike Petrowski said. “I told him be honest with me. You gotta trust guys and he’s been here for a while. He said, ‘I feel good.’ Cody (Astbury, assistant coach) told me he looked better in the bullpen than he looked in the game.”
He carried that look back to the mound. The only run he gave up came on a high bloop single when the runner on first got a head start on a 3-2 count with two outs.
Other than that, Sharpley was lethal, jumping ahead of nearly every batter. He admitted there was no way he was not returning.
“I was sitting there, it was getting on two hours almost and when he asked me how I felt I wasn’t gonna tell him I didn’t feel good,” Sharpley said with a smile. “I came here to pitch today, no matter how I felt I was going back out there. It just happened to be that I went down to warm up and I felt better.”
Prior to the delay, BSP struck for three unearned runs. Connor Luckie reached on a one-out error and there were runners on first and second after a throw to second was late on Sean Elefant’s fielder’s choice.
Darius Land drew a walk and Brien Cardona followed with a smash that second baseman Ryan Koep made an outstanding diving play on to get an out at first. The play scored Luckie, and Kyle Harrington un-did all of Koep’s nice work to save runs with a two-run single to make it 3-0.
The skies then opened and Petrowski worried about maintaining the edge his team gained.
“I’m a big momentum guy,” he said. “We had it there, I thought maybe that delay would get our kids flat and their guys up. When we got them 1-2-3 in fifth I said, ‘Oh OK, that didn’t matter.’”
Indeed, with all eyes watching to see how Sharpley’s arm would handle the inactivity, he got a strikeout, lazy fly ball and ground out to serve notice rust would not be an issue.
BSP loaded the bases with no outs in the sixth before Jake Jones struck out two straight. Elefant then worked an 0-2 count full before getting hit by a pitch to produce an insurance run. That left it to Sharpley to close it out.
“I felt like I had a little more life on my fastball when I came back,” he said. “The change-up was there, the curve was the same. It was great to have the change-up back.”
BroadStPrk(23-8) Whitehouse(28-4) RBIs:
Cardona, Harrington 2, Elefant (BSP), Cosentino (W). Sharpley (7-0);
WP— 000 031 000 001 LP— 0 — 4 6 0 0 — 1 5 1
DeChiaro. Follow Rich Fisher on Twitter @fish4scores