By CHRIS BRANAM
Staff Writer
LANCASTER - Scot Sealy hit a home run that went over the wall - on a bounce.
Carlos Villalobos had a sacrifice fly that scored Jose Cruz Jr. all the way from second base - although Cruz never tagged up on the play and was passed on the basepaths by a teammate.
The Lancaster JetHawks, struggling offensively, scored as many runs by the end of the fifth inning (12) than they had in their previous three games combined.
Yes, there was wild and wacky stuff going on at The Hangar Thursday night, and one of the strangest sights was the scoreboard after it was all over:
Lancaster 14, San Jose 3.
The JetHawks (22-26) had every conceivable break go their way as they stopped the Giants' 10game winning streak in front of 3,469 appreciative fans.
Some of the fans down the leftfield line weren't very festive in the bottom of the first, though, when a sprinkler head broke on the grassy knoll just above them and sent a gusher of water about 20 feet in the air.
It was a sign of weirdness to come. Just minutes later, Sealy hit a pitch from Giants starter Chad Hartvigson deep to the gap in leftcenter field that appeared to bounce on the warning track and over the wall for a ground-rule double.
Not so, said umpire Rob Drake, who called it a home run, bringing San Jose manager Carlos Lezcano out of his dugout in a hurry.
The call stood, however, and the JetHawks were on their way.
"That (homer) was a shot, wasn't it?" Lancaster manager Dave Brundage said with a wink after the game.
The JetHawks scored twice that inning, two more times in the second, three times in the fourth and three more in the fifth to take a 12-1 lead.
But if Sealy's faux homer had Lezcano's blood boiling, then the play on which they blew the game open for good might have taken years off his life.
With one out, Cruz was at second and Sealy at first. Villalobos was at the plate.
Villalobos hit a long fly ball that left fielder Tim Garland caught on the run near the warning track.
Thinking that the ball was going to drop in, Sealy was charging around second when Garland made the catch. He momentarily passed Cruz, who in the confusion didn't run back to second to tag up and broke for third.
Sealy was a dead duck at first, and shortstop Wilson Delgado fired a throw to first to double him up, although Sealy should have been out anyway for passing Cruz.
There was a slight problem, though, with Delgado's throw. There was nobody covering first base for the Giants. There wasn't a Giant within 30 feet of first.
Cruz trotted home on the overthrow, giving the JetHawks an 8-1 lead. Sealy went to second and Lezcano went nuts.
"I stood at home and talked with the catcher," Cruz said. "and we were trying to figure out what just happened."
The beneficiary of the JetHawks' long-awaited outburst was Ken Cloude (4-2), who struck out six and gave up five hits in his second-straight victory.
After a rocky first in which he sandwiched walks around a single by Delgado, Cloude gave up one earned run over the next six innings, retiring nine in a row at one point.
Cruz hit a solo homer in the seventh to put an exclamation point on his second three-hit game in a row.
Cook reached base five times (three singles, two walks), Mike Lanza had a two-run triple in the second, and Jesus Marquez, who replaced Marcus Sturdivant in the fifth, promptly hit a two-run double in his first at-bat.