Keystone Juniors notch come-from-behind win, play Saturday for US title
TAYLOR, MI – The Keystone Junior Little League team led early, fell behind, then did what they often do, came from behind to knock off Southeast champion Virginia by a 10-6 score on Friday afternoon at Heritage Park.
The elimination game win at the Junior Little League World Series propelled Keystone into the Saturday 6 p.m. US championship game with Southwest champion Texas; the winner of that contest will play for the world title on Sunday. With the Friday win, Manager Steve Shade’s team assured itself of no worse than a second-place finish in the United States, but the national and world titles are, with two more wins, within reach.
Keystone put up one run in the top of the first, scored by Cole Cooper who had singled and moved up on a Darius Shade single. The Clinton County team added a second run in the third inning on a sacrifice fly from Watt Probst. Keystone put up three more runs in the fourth: Nolan Cross singled, Aiden Jones walked and with one out Austin Frank moved them up with a sacrifice; Dane Hanna got a run home when the Virginia defense mishandled his groundball and another run scored off a rundown play perfectly executed by Keystone. The score was 5-0 after three and a half innings.
Virginia answered back with two in the bottom of the fourth and took the lead at 6-5 with four runs in the bottom of the fifth, Ben Drinkwine with a 3-run homerun the big blow. At that point Virginia led by one.
Keystone was far from done, pushing across five runs in the top of the sixth to move back up by a 10-6 score. There were a couple walks and a Frank single to load the bases. After a strikeout for the second out of the inning, Darius Shade worked a two-out walk on a full count to knot the score at 6-6. Blake Walker put Keystone back on top with a 2-run double to the right centerfield fence, the score 8-6. And when Virginia mishandled a Probst hard-hit groundball, two more runs scored to give Keystone the 10-6 lead.
Walker, who had come on in relief in the fifth inning, shut Virginia down the rest of the way to earn the win in relief. He finished with 2.2 innings of shutout, no-hit ball, striking out three and walking one. Jones went the firsts 4.1 innings, giving up three hits and four runs. The other two runs were charged to Shade, who followed Jones in the fourth.
Keystone played errorless ball and walked but four batters in the game.
Cooper, Shade and Walker all had two hits each, Walker with a double. Singles came from Cross, Jones, Hayes Miller and Frank.
Keystone on Saturday will try to avenge its 10-3 Thursday loss to Big Oil Little League from Corpus Christi, Texas. The Keystoners were not overly sharp on Thursday, but stepped up their game on Friday; they’ll have to do likewise Saturday to continue their dream season, but the opportunity is there.
K 1 0 1 3 0 5 0 = 10-9-0
V 0 0 0 2 4 0 0 = 6-6-3
