JetHawks' fresh start

McCorkle provides heroics

By DAVE RASBACH
Valley Press Staff Writer

But the Lancaster JetHawks chose to make Thursday their day for a fresh start.

After struggling to the worst first-half record in minor league baseball, the JetHawks, who received four new additions to their roster during the all-star break, got a chance to wipe the slate clean and start over in the second half.

Thanks to two solo home runs by Shawn McCorkle and a strong starting performance by Neil Longo, Lancaster capitalized on that opportunity, grabbing a 4-1 victory over the Stockton Ports before 751 fans at Billy Hebert Field.

"It was a fresh start for us," JetHawks manager Darrin Garner said. "We're going to do things a little different in the second half and be more competitive. We got off to a great start tonight."

The win was the JetHawks' fourth in five games since they ended a franchise-long 12-game losing streak June 17. It also was the second straight win for Lancaster (24-47), which will attempt to win three in a row tonight for the first time since the second, third and fourth games of the season back in early April.

"This is a totally new half for us," McCorkle said. "We're going to put the first half behind us and come out more intense in the second half."

Like the rest of his teammates, McCorkle didn't wait long, hitting his sixth home run of the season in his first at-bat Thursday. McCorkle belted the second pitch he saw in his third-inning at-bat against James Johnson (3-4) off the scoreboard in right-center. The one-out blast represented the first run of the game.

It didn't take McCorkle (2-for-3, walk) long to become the third JetHawks player to have a multihomer game this season.

Once again, Johnson was the victim in the fifth inning after he fell behind McCorkle 3-1. This time, the native of Newton, N.J., crushed a shot that cleared the scoreboard.

Making McCorkle's feat even more impressive was the fact that it came off a left-hander. The lefthanded hitting McCorkle was dropped to ninth in the Lancaster lineup because of the unfavorable matchup against Johnson, but it obviously didn't matter.

"Lately, I feel I've been seeing the ball better off left-handers than right-handers," McCorkle said. "I know that's kind of weird. . . He threw me a low fastball, and that's where I like them."

Alex Fernandez (April 20 at High Desert) and Craig Kuzmic (May 17 at High Desert) were the only other Lancaster batters to hit two home runs in a game this season.

Lancaster added two runs off Johnson in the fourth inning, thanks to two errors charged to all-star shortstop Chris Rowan. Mike Marchiano scored the first run on the second of Rowan's errors, while Jason Regan, who joined the team from Class AA New Haven earlier in the day, scored on the second of Harvey Hargrove's three hits.

Longo took care of the rest, scattering eight hits and two walks through his eight innings of work.

The only time Stockton got to the Lancaster right-hander was in the fourth, when Jeff Deardorff's one-out triple down the left-field line allowed Jeff Pickler to pick up the RBI one batter later.

In all, Longo, who struck out two, forced the Ports to strand nine runners in the game. The win was the first for Longo (3-2) since May 21 against Rancho Cucamonga.

Justin Kaye pitched a scoreless ninth inning to pick up his ninth save.

"We're going to try to turn up the intensity in the second half," Garner said. "I think the guys got off to a good start tonight."