After grabbing opener, JetHawks lose nightcap

After Lancaster starter Greg Wooten pitched five strong innings in the first game of Monday's doubleheader, the JetHawks watched High Desert rally for a victory in the second game.

First, you couldn't take your eyes off Greg Wooten's lightning bolts. Then, you couldn't miss Mother Nature's light show happening as a side show behind him.

Then, you really couldn't miss it. After Wooten pitched the JetHawks to a 7-0 victory over the High Desert Mavericks in the first game of Monday's doubleheader, after High Desert's Cody Sundbeck responded with a two-hitter over six innings for a 5-1 Mavericks' victory, the elements took over.

What was left of the 2,692 fans at The Hangar on Monday watched the two teams beat a summer squall into the clubhouse by mere moments. They watched the JetHawks get strong starts from Wooten and Daron Kirkreit (who lost the nightcap, despite scattering eight hits in six innings).

And they watched as both teams used big innings. After the JetHawks scored six runs in the sixth inning of the opener, High Desert answered with four runs in the top of the seventh in the nightcap.

The crushing blow in that latter game was pinch-hitter James Rinne's liner off the glove of third baseman Cirilo Cruz. Instead of a tailor-made double play, the shot scored Dan Meier with the gamewinning run.

"That's what we needed, to come out here, win the first game, then win the series, then turn around and have another good game to sweep the series," JetHawks' pitching coach Greg Harris said. "That's getting us in the situations you want to be in."

The JetHawks thought they had the situations accounted for when Alexander Fernandez blasted Sundbeck's 0-1 pitch onto the Avenue I onramp for his third home run in two games. But that was it for Lancaster.

The teams were relegated to double-duty because of the onehour, seven-minute summer squall that washed out Sunday's game. So with a nifty lightning show providing fireworks au natural over the right-field wall to the east, Wooten and Harvey Hargrove provided fireworks of the man-made variety.

Before he turned things over to Jeff Farnsworth, who picked up his second save with a hitless 1 innings, Wooten scattered five hits in his 5 innings, striking out seven and allowing only one runner to third base.

The initial lightning came from the JetHawks' Jermaine Clark, who broke a 0-0 tie in the top of the fifth when he came home on Patrick Johnson's passed ball.

Clark's run was manufactured like it came off an assembly line. The JetHawks' leadoff hitter walked, stole second, then went to third on a gutsy play - Hargrove's grounder to third.

The next inning, Hargrove would figure more prominently. About as prominent as a three-run homer off the second wall in left, which Hargrove hit to highlight Lancaster's six-run sixth inning.

An inning long in coming for the JetHawks. To that point, Mavericks' reliever Bart Miadich - in for starter Jeremy Ward and his sore arm muscle - had allowed but two hits: singles by Hargrove (2-for-4) and Greg Connors (3for4).

The oversight got rectified in a hurry. In the sixth, Lancaster rolled out 11 batters, eight of whom reached base. Aside from Hargrove's three-run homer, the JetHawks reveled in Clark's tworun single and singles by Shawn McCorkle, Matt Sachse and Connors, one of two hits Connors had in the inning.
VP-02/21/09-14:23:11

Uploaded July 13, 1999