Titan’s Fear Strikes Out : Ricabal Stops Pitching Scared and Helps Take Fullerton to Omaha

Dan Ricabal remembers vividly the day his pitching hit rock bottom. He wondered if there was any point in going on.

Ricabal reached the crossroads in his baseball career in Cal State Fullerton’s 15th game this season against the University of San Diego. He didn’t complete an inning, retiring only two batters, and gave up four walks, a hit and three runs.

“When I try to think of what my worst nightmare as a pitcher would be, this doesn’t even come close (to being topped),” Ricabal said. “This was a lot worse than anything I could imagine.”

But if that day was the bottom, then this week is clearly the top.

Ricabal and his teammates are in the College World Series, but they might not be here, ready to take on second-seeded Georgia Tech at 12:36 p.m. (PDT) today in the opening game at Rosenblatt Stadium if it hadn’t been for Ricabal.

“He’s been a key to the whole thing,” said George Horton, the Titan assistant who coaches the pitchers for Coach Augie Garrido.

Ricabal was the winning pitcher in two of Fullerton’s four victories in the NCAA Midwest I Regional at Oklahoma State, and he appeared in three of five games.

He started and was the winning pitcher in the regional opener Friday against Northwestern State of Louisiana, giving up only six hits and two runs, one of them earned, in 6 2/3 innings of an 11-5 victory.

Then, after Fullerton was beaten by Oklahoma State on Sunday, he was back on the mound against Memphis State Monday afternoon in a game the Titans had to win to stay alive. Ricabal went the last five innings, holding the Tigers to four hits and one run.

And it didn’t end there. With the Fullerton pitching staff stretched thin by five games in four days in temperatures that ranged from the low 80s to the mid-90s, Ricabal came on to pitch again for 2 1/3 innings in the championship game against Oklahoma State later that night.

In 14 innings of three games, he had a 1.93 earned-run average, giving up only nine hits.

“He gave us everything he had in those three games,” Horton said. “His resiliency was really phenomenal.”

It was hardly the same Ricabal who was in the depths of despair in February. In his first five starts he had given up 27 hits, 25 runs and 20 walks in 22 1/3 innings. Fullerton’s most consistent pitcher the previous season with a 11-3 record suddenly couldn’t find the strike zone. When he did, the ball was hit sharply, time after time.

But nothing was worse than the game against San Diego.

“It really was the worst period of time I had since I started playing baseball 16 years ago when I was in Little League,” said Ricabal, who was a star pitcher for San Gabriel High and Cerritos College. “I thought then that my career was probably over. That’s the worst feeling you can possibly have. I just couldn’t believe that after pitching so well all those years, it had come down to one game that was so painful.”

He knew he was going to lose his spot in the starting rotation. He swallowed his pride and went to the bullpen.

“It’s tough to do that after you’ve been a starter, but I did a lot of thinking then,” he said. “What happened was that I decided I definitely wanted to show people that I still could compete at this level.”

When Ricabal thought about the slump, he had no doubt that the problem dated back to his days in an Alaska collegiate league. He had been successful there the previous two years, but last summer was strangely different.

“I guess I went there a little tired,” he said. “I’d just come off a season where I’d pitched 130 innings, and I was on a plane to Alaska 10 days later. The team I played for was short on pitching at the start. I had three starts in the first week and my record was 0-3. My arm didn’t feel that sore, but I could tell I just didn’t have any juice in my pitches. My fastball was down to 77 . . . . 78 m.p.h. and my curve had no bite in it. I had nothing on the ball, so I started being fine with my pitches and people were hitting the ball on me.”

Ricabal finished the summer with a 2-7 record and it gnawed at him throughout the fall and winter.

“My confidence was really low when we started our season because of that,” he said. “I was still pitching too carefully. I felt I had to make the perfect pitch every time, and I was always falling behind batters.”

At that point, Ricabal decided it was going to be all or nothing.

“I felt my career was on the line, and that I was going to take whatever risks I had to take,” he said. “If a ball hit me in the middle of the forehead, then that was that. I decided I was going to attack the game, not let it attack me. I started throwing the ball again, not aiming it.”

Ricabal said his more aggressive approach has worked. His sharpness returned, and the batters no longer were having their way with his pitches.

“What I’ve learned is that this game cannot be played scared, and that’s helped me as much as anything,” Ricabal said. “You’ve got to play it aggressively.”

In his last 12 appearances of the regular season, Ricabal was 6-1 with a 2.00 ERA. In one 40-inning stretch, he gave up only three earned runs.

“He’s really become a valuable commodity for us because of all the things he can do,” Horton said. “We can use him as a starter or in long or short relief. Dan can give you 12 innings, or one out if that’s what you need.”

Ricabal just hopes he can keep it going now in the College World Series. It is, of course, a big moment for him personally, one that three months ago he doubted he would ever experience.

“This is a real rush of excitement,” he said. “One of the things I said to myself last February was that the past was gone, and I couldn’t do anything about any of that. All I could do anything about was the future.”

Today’s College World Series Games

At Rosenblatt Stadium, Omaha

* Georgia Tech vs. Cal State Fullerton, 12:36 p.m.

* LSU vs. Florida State, 4:36 p.m.