Bad Storm hits Lancaster, ends short winning streak

Lake Elsinore's Joe Gangemi shut down Lancaster's offense, stopping the JetHawks' modest twogame winning streak

By BRIAN ROBIN
Valley Press Staff Writer

Experienced Lancaster JetHawks fans. Experienced and exasperated JetHawks' fans, experienced in following a struggling ball club and exasperated at the ease with which Lake Elsinore left-hander Joe Gangemi handcuffed their team for 8 innings Saturday night.

Perhaps the flight out of The Hangar slowed a bit with Mike Marchiano's single. Maybe even bottle-necked with Greg Connors' two-out, three-run homer. But when Gangemi recovered his changeup, Scott Maynard grounded out to second and the Storm had a 7-5 victory over Lancaster in front of 4,841 restless fans.

Connors' blast - coming on the one changeup Gangemi hung all night - was nice for the JetHawks. It even brought back memories of Friday night's recovery from an 8-3 deficit. But it wasn't enough to extend the JetHawks' winning streak to a season-high three games.

Already secured in the South Division first-half cellar, Lancaster will end the half in the season's final day game this afternoon at 2.

"That's what we need going into (today)," said Connors, whose team-high ninth homer cleared the first wall in left. "That's going to put us in a good, upbeat mode, scoring three runs in the ninth inning."

After the way Gangemi mowed through the JetHawks, anything will do. The soft-tossing lefthander, who came into Saturday night packing a 1-8 record and 6.75 earned-run average, held the JetHawks to three hits over eight innings. Only the ninth-inning fireworks blemished what wound up being Gangemi's first complete game of the year.

"He pitched better than his record showed tonight," Lancaster manager Darrin Garner said.

"(Angels' pitching coach) Marcel Lachemann comes into town and he likes to call it a glorified game of catch," Gangemi said. "He wants me to go out there and just throw the ball. Keep it simple."

It looked so simple to Lancaster hitters, who spent vast chunks of their Saturday night beating balls into the ground.

"I think we got ourselves out tonight," Garner said. "We swung at some bad pitches. The double-play balls we hit, those are pitches we shouldn't have swung at."

Those double-play balls would end three of the JetHawks' first four innings. By that time, Lancaster had dug itself a familiar hole.

This one was 3-1. Five of the first six hits off recently signed starter Daron Kirkreit went for extra bases: the first-inning doubles by Jeb Dougherty and Matt Curtis; the leadoff triple by Juan Rodriguez in the fourth and the first of two Chris Walther doubles, which scored Rodriguez and gave Walther the first of his three RBI.

In his first start since coming over from the independent Atlantic League, Kirkreit struggled at the outset, but settled down as he went along. Settled down, that is, until Rodriguez opened the sixth by lining a pitch off Kirkreit's elbow.

That left a bruise with an imprint of the ball's stitches on the big right-hander's elbow - one that required nothing more than a bandage and an early night off.

His successor, Juan Ramos, would get tattooed in other ways.

Curtis singled, then took second on right fielder Gerald Eady's throw to third. Walther promptly slashed a two-run double past first baseman Connors' glove.

That's where things got interesting. The dust and everyone's mood hadn't settled when Walther went to third. Apparently the ball had gotten past Ramos, who thought time was called.

It wasn't. Nor was it when Ramos wild-pitched Walther home two batters later.

Lancaster's first two runs came in similar, manufactured fashion. In the third, it was an Eady single, an Eady theft of second, Shawn McCorkle's grounder to the right side and Joel Ramirez's single.

In the fifth, it was a Connors single, followed by a stolen base, and grounders to the right side by Maynard and Eady.