Titan Ricabal Poised to Strike : College baseball: Slider helps pitcher find success at Fullerton.

Rosa Ricabal had her son’s suit cleaned and pressed and waiting for him Tuesday night. His laundry also was done, and she had ironed and sorted everything he needed to take. The socks, the T-shirts, the pants, all of it was counted and organized.

“It’s a special thing with mom,” Dan Ricabal, the ace of the Cal State Fullerton pitching staff, said with a smile. “She’s one of those types of mothers who always looks after their kids. I’m 20, and she thinks I’m 10.”

Here he was, ready to leave the next day for his first NCAA regional, where Fullerton will open against Maine in Austin, Tex., and all he had to worry about was one thing: Would he pitch on Friday or would Fullerton coaches hold him until Saturday, when the Titans could face USC?

He knew what his father, Ramon, would be telling him later Tuesday evening, after a homemade Cuban meal.

“Throw strikes,” Dan said, grinning. “He hates it when I walk people. Those will probably be his last words when he drops me off.

“ ‘Danny, just throw strikes.’ ”

Which is what he has been doing practically since that day in the bullpen last fall, when associate head coach George Horton began teaching him a new pitch--the slider. By the end of the season, it was effective enough that Ricabal, a right-hander, became Fullerton’s stopper. The Titans won only seven of their final 15 games--and Ricabal earned victories in five of them.

He heads into the regionals with an 11-2 record, a 3.39 earned-run average and a spot on the all-Big West team tucked into his back pocket, right beside his can of chaw. He also was named a third-team All-American Friday by Collegiate Baseball.

“He’s certainly been our most reliable pitcher,” Horton said. “I knew he’d do a good job, but I was hoping he would be our No. 2 or 3 guy. That would mean we’d have three quality pitchers.

“I didn’t expect him to emerge as what you would think of as our best pitcher.”

Strikes? He has been throwing peas. He has five complete games--tied for staff high with Mike Parisi--and has worked a team-high 119 1/3 innings.

“He’s been our chief,” outfielder Dante Powell said. “He’ll throw all day, like an ironman.”

Added second baseman Jeremy Carr: “We know he’s going to go out there and throw nine innings and give the bullpen a rest. He’s going to compete, hit his spots and let the defense make the plays.”

And now comes the part he has dreamed about since transferring to Fullerton from Cerritos College last fall. Suddenly, a lifetime will be crammed into four days. The only thing missing will be his parents.

Rosa and Ramon, who fled Cuba 22 years ago and then met a year later in a shoe factory in Rosemead, will not be able to make the trip to see the eldest of their three sons pitch. Plane fare, hotels, meals, it all adds up.

“I’ll be calling them a lot this weekend,” Ricabal said. “They’ll be glued to the radio. They may have to drive to Fullerton and listen to it on the car radio while sitting in a parking lot at school.”

But that’s what they will do. How can they miss the NCAAs?

When he played in a collegiate league in Alaska last summer, they had him mail home tapes of the local radio broadcasts whenever he played.

“Every time I pitched,” he said. “I’d have to send it to them every week. They’d know the results and everything and still listen to nine innings.”

The madness started when Dan was 12 and they signed him up for Little League.

“A lot of parents sign their kids up for Little League and say, ‘My son, he’s going to be in the big leagues,’ ” Ricabal said. “Not them. My dad said, ‘This is what my son likes. We might as well let him do it.’ ”

His parents learned the game, enjoyed the game, began to live the game. Ricabal’s father had followed baseball before leaving Cuba. He knew all the big names . . . Mantle, DiMaggio, Williams. But he learned the intricacies when his son started playing.

“I’d come home from a game and he’d have a problem with why the No. 4 hitter was bunting,” Ricabal said. “I’d explain it and he’d still have a hard time. He doesn’t like a lot of bunting.

“But now, when he watches baseball, he’ll turn to me and say, ‘He should have bunted in that situation, huh?’ ”

By playing in the Alaska leagues the last two summers, the step up from community college to Division I wasn’t that extreme. Ricabal had been facing Division I players, and he wasn’t intimidated.

The only time he was real nervous, he said, came before the second game of the season. Stanford had opened the night before with a 4-3 victory over Fullerton on a two-out, two-strike, ninth-inning home run, and Ricabal knew another defeat could be devastating to the Titans’ confidence.

So, all he did in his first Division I start was pitch a complete-game, 10-inning eight-hitter to defeat Stanford, 6-4. A week later, he earned the victory in Fullerton’s only triumph in a three-game set at Texas.

The key was learning the slider, which looks like a fastball out of his hand but, at the last second, might break two or three feet away from the hitter.

The curve, on the other hand, breaks down from 12 o’clock to 6.

“With me not having a lot of velocity, all (hitters) have to do is look for the curve and adjust to the fastball,” Ricabal said. “With me, they look curve, think fastball and pull the trigger.”

And then the slider breaks that-a-way, and they’re trudging back to the dugout.

“The slider is a big pitch,” Ricabal said. “I throw it when I’m behind in the count a lot, on the first pitch, and it’s my strikeout pitch.”

Ricabal won’t know until later today or even tomorrow when he will pitch in Texas. The Fullerton coaches figure they have two options: They could start Ricabal in the first game because he is their best pitcher and, also, he bounces back the quickest.

Or, they could start Parisi against Maine on Friday and hold Ricabal for Saturday’s game, which figures to be tougher.

“It’s a Catch-22 situation,” Horton said. “He bounces back the best of anybody we have, but the other consideration is who matches up best against the hitters we’re going to see.

“The decision will not be based on just getting to the last day. It will be based on winning the whole thing.”

If they do win the whole thing in Austin, there will be an extra bonus included for Ricabal: His parents have informed him, no way would they miss a trip to Omaha.

So the way he figures it, with that on the line, you better believe he will do his part in the regionals.

And when the arm begins to tire and the breaks seem to be going the other way, those are the times when his mind will drift back to Fullerton, where a beaming couple will be sitting in some darkened parking lot. The radio will be snapping and cracking like in the olden days, and his mother will be picturing what Austin must be like and thinking ahead, wondering, how many suitcases will they need in Omaha?

And right beside her will be his father, staring at the radio dials, with only one thing on his mind.

Throw strikes, Danny.

Throw strikes.