Lakewood Baseball Aims for Some Wins Now, More Later

Baseball is a perfect game for patient men. The mornings blur into the afternoons blur into the nights blur into the mornings. The seasons string together, one after another, from the first practices to the last games. Coaches scratch out lineups and rotations, always jotting down notes, always evaluating players, always preparing for what might come next.

Baseball is a perfect game for Mike Ribar, even though Ribar is not a patient man.

Ribar played four seasons for and four more for Kent State back in the 1980s. He has coached college players and high school players and youth players. Now he is back in the dugout with the Rangers, a coach on the same patch of land where he played decades back. On Saturday night, he watched his team lose another game, this time at home to crosstown rival , 11-3. The Rangers never led.

“We battle, we fight, we press,” Ribar said. “We’ve been one run away a few times this season.”

But the Rangers have rarely won. With the season winding down, they are 3-20, the beneficiaries of a turf field that dries quickly and has allowed them to play on through interminable spring rains, the victims of an aggressive schedule that has often left them with losses.

Point in case, their game Saturday night against the Eagles (10-4), the back-to-back defending Division I state champions, still on the schedule. “The seniors wanted this win bad,” Ribar said. And for all seven innings, they played like it. 

The Rangers fell behind by three runs before they ever stepped in the batter’s box, and by five runs by the middle of the third inning, but they still pushed across three runs in the bottom of the third. Right fielder Alex Antel grounded out to score left fielder Michael Gonzalez, and second baseman Grant Graves later followed with a double to the wall in center to drive in catcher Ryan Carpenter and shortstop Eric Roder.

But then that was it. Eagles starter Rakim Smith bounced back to set down the Rangers in order in the fourth, relievers Alex Dhillon and Billy Wiltman closed out the game with six strikeouts during their three shutout innings, and the Eagles scored six more runs to stretch their lead. With the Eagles banged up — one starter is out with a sore shoulder and two more are in the middle of suspensions for disciplinary reasons — coach Danny Allie said this was “the kind of game where we had to let other guys come out and play.”

The Eagles are, of course, preparing for the postseason and another march toward a state championship. Ribar and the Rangers, meanwhile, have their sights set on just sneaking into sectionals and seeing what might happen.

Once the season ends, though, Ribar has a plan for his team and for the whole program. When he played shortstop for the Rangers from 1982 through ’85 — on the same patch of land as his team plays on now — he always wanted to spend as much time as possible on the field. He lived for baseball. He wants his players to spend more time with their bats and their balls and their gloves.

Eight will play the summer on various area all-star teams. The rest have committed to practicing and playing. “That was one of the requirements,” Ribar said. “If you want to play for Lakewood High, you have to play.”

Ribar plans to spend his summer coaching local players of all ages — he spent Saturday morning in Sandusky with the U12 team — in order to stitch the fabric of a bigger system. Only a half dozen Rangers will return next season, and only two of them, sophomore shortstop Eric Roder and junior designated hitter Adam Morris, started Saturday. Ribar knows he has to prepare the younger players to step up.

His mornings will blur into his afternoons wills blur into his nights will blur into his mornings. His seasons will string together. Mike Ribar will probably continue to say that he is not a patient man. In some respects, he is not — he wants to win now — but in some others, he is. He knows how much time he needs to build the Rangers back up.

“We’ve won in the past at Lakewood,” he said. “We’re going to do it again. It’s going to get done.”

One season is almost finished. There are plenty more still to go.

ST. EDWARD 11

LAKEWOOD 3

SEHS   3 1 1   4 0 2   0   --   11 12 1

LHS      0 0 3   0 0 0   0   --   3   4   1

WP: Rakim Smith, 4IP, 3H, 3R, 1ER, 0BB, 6K, 52 pitches, 37 strikes. LP: Bobby Rivera, 2IP, 3H, 4R, 2ER, 3BB, 1HB, 3K, 58 pitches, 29 strikes. 2B: Cory Blackstock 2 (SEHS), Stephen Kisan (SEHS), Vince Bartolone (SEHS), Grant Graves (LHS). 3B: Cody Cooper (SEHS). SB: Matt Dillow 2 (SEHS), Kevin Burke (SEHS).