Dishman takes Stars all the way through

Friday, July 19, 1996 | 11:59 a.m.

A brief trip to the major leagues may have been just what Las Vegas Stars left-hander Glenn Dishman needed to turn his season around.

Dishman, making his first start since returning to the Stars after a 10-day stint with the San Diego Padres, turned in Las Vegas' first nine-inning complete game of 1996 in a 5-3 victory over the Salt Lake Buzz Thursday night at Cashman Field.

"Even though I didn't pitch (much), I got a lot of confidence there and confidence is a big part of this game," Dishman said after snapping a personal two-game losing streak and improving his record to 5-6. "Even though I was pitching so bad, that they still called me up to try to help them out, that helped me out a lot."

Stars manager Jerry Royster agreed.

"For him to get out of here, I think it did him some good," Royster said. "He got out of this (hot) weather. Sitting around in this weather, whether you're pitching or not, wears you out -- and he got a chance to get strong."

Faced with an overworked bullpen, Royster couldn't have asked for a better performance from Dishman, who allowed three runs on five hits, didn't walk a batter and struck out seven.

"This is as good as you can get for us right now," Royster said of Dishman's complete game. "It becomes the game of the year, under the circumstances, for me. I didn't even look towards my bullpen tonight."

Although he was aware of the Stars' predicament in the bullpen, Dishman said he tried not to think about it once he got on the mound.

"You don't want to think about it because you don't want to put too much pressure on yourself, but I knew we had a lot of extra innings games and injuries and our staff was hurting," Dishman said.

And Dishman added that tossing a complete game was the furthest thing from his mind.

"I just wanted to get somebody out," Dishman said. "My last outing was 10 days ago and I thought I threw the best game of the year and I gave up eight runs. I was just hoping I would still have pretty good stuff.

"Around the fifth inning I was starting to get a little bit tired, but then I started catching a little second wind. I was thinking about that today; I said, 'Well, I haven't pitched, really, in 10 days, so I'm sure somebody's going to say my arm is rested, but then again I'm not going to have the stamina I had before.'"

Dishman breezed through the first two innings, retiring the first six Buzz batters he faced, before giving up a leadoff single to Mitch Simons and a two-run home run to former Basic High star Chris Latham in the third.

Latham also took Dishman deep for the second time in the game with two outs in the fifth inning to tie the score at 3-3.

"The first was one was a slider in and in a normal park that's a fly ball but, hey, they've got to pitch here, too," Dishman said of Latham's first home run. "The second one was a fastball and he crushed it -- he earned that one."

The Stars went to the long ball themselves in the latter portion of the game. Jason Thompson led off the sixth inning with a solo homer to left that gave Las Vegas a 4-3 lead and Randy Ready hit a solo shot with two outs in the seventh that gave the Stars a two-run cushion.