Hemberger breathes life into Fleetwings

Lefty ignores cozy confines, blanks Silver Creek, tying series 1-1.


By Keith Groller
Of The Morning Call

 

It's a baseball reality that left-handed pitchers have longer lifespans than other players. Sometimes, lefties even resurrect careers that had seemed dead.

That seems to be what has happened for Fleetwings' hurler Dan Hemberger.

The 1997 Emmaus High graduate put away his glove when he went to college and kept it hidden for about seven years, until being coaxed back to the diamond.

His reborn career certainly gave life to the Fleetwings, who rode his masterful two-hit shutout and a trio of third-inning home runs to an 8-0 Tri-County League playoff win over Silver Creek in Springtown Saturday night.

Hemberger's blanking, even more impressive considering that it came at the cozy, hitter-friendly Silver Creek A.A. field, evened the best-of-five semifinal series at a game apiece. Game 3 is set for 5 p.m. today at Scherersville.

''About a month ago, I pitched four innings of no-hit ball in relief against them, so I got another opportunity,'' said Hemberger, who attended the University of Pittsburgh and lived in western Pennsylvania after graduating.

Hemberger returned to the area and revived his career when he bumped into Jeremy Arner, a former Emmaus teammate and now the Fleetwings' player-manager.

''I played with Dan in high school and I just ran into him one night and asked him if he could still throw and wanted to play,'' Arner said. ''He joined us last year and continues to get better. His fastball has a lot of sink to it. It just dives and he gets a lot of groundballs. Everybody loves to hit down here, but the way he pitched, it didn't matter where we were playing.''

Hemberger walked one and fanned five. He allowed only a pair of two-out singles — by Jeremy Bartha in the first and John Stezenko in the third.

''When a guy shuts you out in this park, he's doing a great job,'' said Silver Creek manager Dylan Dando. ''He keeps us off balance. If you come around here enough, you learn our guys are geared to hitting fastballs. They would rather see a guy who throws in the 90s, than a guy who hits spots like [Hemberger] does.

''He located the ball where he wanted and Arner does a great job of catching him, because he knows the hitters in this league. That was the story of the game.''

Meriting at least a sidebar was the trio of home runs by the Fleetwings in the third. Long solo blasts by Scott Garger and Tommy Williams sandwiched a three-run poke by Matt Godusky as a 1-0 game became a 6-0 rout.

''You get the ball up in the strike zone here, you're in trouble, and that's what happened to our pitcher,'' Dando said. ''You don't need a lot of power to hit it out of here.''

The Fleetwings' lead grew to 8-0 in the fourth when Matt Marcks tripled and scored on Ben Swatsky's single. Still, Hemberger approached each inning as though it was 0-0.

''I tried to stay focused on my task and tried not to pay attention to the score,'' he said. ''It was important for us to win, even the series and get back home-field advantage.''

Considering his record against the Raiders, Hemberger might get the ball again in the series, possibly in Game 5.

''We're not thinking that far ahead just yet,'' Arner said.


Fleetwings    015 200 0 — 8  8  0

Silver Creek  000 000 0 — 0  2  0


Hemberger and Arner; Medlock, Medina (4) and Johnson. HRs: Fleetwings, Garger (3rd, none on), Matt Godusky (3rd, 2 on), Williams (3rd, none on).



keith.groller@mcall.com

610-820-6740

From The Morning Call -- August 7, 2005

Copyright © 2005, The Morning Call