Big fourth leads Fort Washington

Keown earns complete game against Horsham

With a big sevenrun fourth inning, Fort Washington got out of Upper Dublin High School with a 12-2 mercyrule Lower Montco American Legion victory over Horsham in six innings Thursday night.

Highlighting the victory was starting pitcher Kevin Keown, who earned his first complete game in the legion baseball level, going all six innings striking out five batters.

“The mindset was to stay calm,” said Keown. “Trying to get ground balls and not strikeout a lot of batters to get faster at bats but definitely throwing a lot of strikes helped.”

Fort Washington started the game in a big way when the leadoff hitter Jack Jamison got on base on one pitch with a single. He later stole the next three bases respectively to score the first run.

Elijah Peck later became the second run of the game after he scored on a single from Brian McPeak to give Fort Washington a 2-0 lead after one inning.

After Fort Washington scored two more runs in the second, Horsham finally responded from four runs by scoring two runs in the bottom of the third when Josh Heeb score two runs on a double.

Fort Washington basically said if Horsham scores, they would score right back. That’s exactly what they did as Fort Washington scored seven runs on five hits to eventually get away with the victory.

Up by nine after five innings, Fort Washington got the one run it needed when Sean Curran got a pinch-hit double to get the 10run deficit.

Horsham did threaten to score a run in the bottom of the sixth, getting a runner on first with one out, but Keown got the last two outs back-to-back to give Fort

Washington the 10-run mercy-rule victory.

Fort Washington head coach Gary Bonitatibus was thrilled with Keown’s performance earning his first complete game.

“Kevin has really been coming on as a pitcher,” said Bonitatibus. “He just has to believe in himself all the time and he’s got some good stuff.”

“He throws really hard,”

added Bonitatibus. “It was great seeing him get his first complete game, he gave up a couple walks but he got the outs he needed to get.”

Horsham head coach Bill DeBoer wasn’t surprised with the loss considering not having the entire team at the game.

“We were down 4-0 at the time when I told them to chip away,” said DeBoer. “It comes down to how much pitching we have at the end of the year and we got some kids away down at the shore, so I pretty much had to piece it together for

the team.”

Keown earned the win for Fort Washington going for six innings and only letting go two earned runs.

Max Blenzak earned the loss after throwing the fourth inning and giving up seven runs despite only giving up three earned runs.

ALEX WAHL — FOR DIGITAL FIRST MEDIA Fort Washington’s Kevin Keown throws pitch against Horsham. He earned his first career complete game on Thursday.