Garner strikingly mad after being tossed

Lancaster manager Darrin Garner was ejected as his team dropped 11 games under .500.

By BRIAN GOLDEN
Valley Press Staff Writer

Unfamiliarity with the strike zone may breed something worse.

It seemed to Monday night, when JetHawks manager Darrin Garner spewed enough angry emotions to match the 13 runs the High Desert Mavericks put on the scoreboard in a 13-6 loss seen by a Maverick Stadium gathering of 1,122.

The target of Garner's temper was home plate umpire Ryan Bleiberg and his pocket-sized thumbnail sketch of the strike zone. Monday's was the sixth consecutive game Bleiberg and infield partner Ricardo Losoya have called involving the JetHawks - and they're scheduled to do Lancaster's next nine games, too.

If Lancaster was feeling blue, it might have been literally.

How else to explain JetHawks ace Brandon Parker, 4-0 with a 1.98 entering Monday's start, giving up eight runs in only 1 1/3 innings?

Especially after Parker five-hit the Mavs over six shutout innings in his only previous visit to Adelanto on April 22.

"I thought he got squeezed tonight," Garner said. "He got (abused). He's guy who throw strikes and he was hitting the catcher's glove all night."

Parker saw his ERA balloon from 1.98 to 3.62 in the span of four outs.

When the strike zone is the size of postage stamp, it's easy to start air mailing parcels.

High Desert did, climbing past Lancaster and dumping the JetHawks into the cellar of the California League's Southern Division by a half-game.

The JetHawks' record of 14-25, 11 games under .500, is the worst in the club's four-year Lancaster history.

Once Dan Meier's two-run triple capped an eight-run outburst comprised of four singles, three walks and Belvani Martinez's tworun double, Garner paused long enough to air out the umpire from a nose-to-nose distance.

Garner was excused for the evening.

His team found itself in a hole too deep to escape. It wasted a splendid offensive night by Craig Kuzmic, who doubled and homered twice, driving in four runs. Kuzmic had hit three homers in his previous 96 at-bats in 29 games.

"We've need to stay away from the big innings," Kuzmic said. "If we do that, we will start coming around. Take away that second inning and it was a close game."

High Desert's Ronald Calloway unload a three-run homer off Zachary Stark in the third inning, and Mark Osborne added a solo parting shot in the fifth to let Mavericks right-hander Ben Norris (2-2) cruise.

The game of eight-ball rendered an early 2-0 lead by Lancaster a footnote. Kuzmic ripped a drive off Norris' glove that bounced behind first base for a double.

Harvey Hargrove tucked an RBI double inside first base, and later scored the second run the hard way when Mavericks catcher Osborne's pickoff throw to third base caromed off his shoulder and down the line.

Kuzmic crushed a three-run shot, his fourth home run of the season, out of the park in center field in the fifth. The switch hitter pulled his fifth homer of the year over the right field wall leading off the seventh.

"I've just got to kick myself in the butt a little bit, forget about the past, and start all over right now," Kuzmic said. "I want to go out and do my job and help us put together some wins."