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A pitch for morale The games go on for gabe speier even wiTh baseball in hiaTus
By MARK PATTON
NEWS-PRESS STAFF WRITER
M
ajor League Baseball pitcher Gabe Speier hones in on a different home plate these days. The coronavirus has forced the Kansas City Royals lefthander into quarantine at his parents’ house in Santa Barbara. The Speier family, however, doesn’t take a pandemic sitting down. They rang in Gabe’s 25th birthday with their own backyard Olympic Games on Easter Sunday. “It was a lot of fun — my whole family was there except my brother Jared, who’s quarantined in Los Angeles with his wife (Emily) and their newborn,” Gabe said. The Speier Olympics was actually an eight-event obstacle course. It included putting a golf ball, slalom racing on a razor scooter, rolling a Bocce Ball for accuracy, volleyball spiking, throwing a football through a basketball hoop, hitting a Wiffle ball, running a slalom course and finishing it all up with a ring toss. Gabe’s sister Lucy, a 15-yearold freshman at Dos Pueblos High, won the gold medal, edging out her mother Jenny and her father Craig. Gabe just missed making the podium, finishing fourth ahead of his fiancé, Megan Leiphardt, and brother Jesse. “I was in such a rush, I messed up a couple of times,” Gabe said. He’s not the only baseball player feeling anxious these days. The COVID-19 pandemic shut down spring training on March 12. Major League Baseball’s regular season, which would have started more than a month ago, remains in limbo. He’s heard all the different scenarios, of either centralizing games at spring training ballparks, or at Major League stadiums with teams only playing against opponents in their region. “Obviously, there would be
COURTESY PHOTO
Vitalant, a nonprofit blood center, is seeking convalescent plasma donations as part of the efforts toward COVID-19 treatments. Pictured is Vitalant’s first donor, Dwight Everette.
TreaTmenT efforTs for CoviD-19 Vitalant asking for convalescent plasma donations
By PAUL GONZALEZ
NEWS-PRESS STAFF WRITER
W
hile a cure and vaccine for COVID-19 remains elusive, nonprofit blood donation center Vitalant is asking those who have recovered from COVID-19 to donate their convalescent
COURTESY PHOTOS Kansas City Royals pitcher and Dos Pueblos High alum Gabe Speier is keeping his chin up despite the curveball thrown by the COVID-19 pandemic.
no fans, but they could still get TV revenue from that, and people could watch,” Speier said. “I’m assuming things will change — they’ve changed a few times already. “There are so many things that the players association and the owners and the commissioner still have to agree upon.” Active roster size is one of the biggest questions. Speier, who is on the Royals’ 40-man roster, was competing for one
Gabe Speier and his family celebrate his 25th birthday on Easter with the Speier Olympics.
of 26 active spots when spring training was curtailed. One proposal is to expand active rosters to 50 since there would be no minor league teams to pull up replacements for injured players. “We haven’t been told what the rosters would look like as far as the numbers and so forth,” Royals’ general manager Dayton Moore said. “We’re just assuming that we’ll be able to have additional players on our active roster. “If that’s the case, then you’d anticipate taking more pitching, which is going to give more players an opportunity. That’s a good thing for them and the industry.” Speier, a 2013 graduate of Dos Pueblos, made his Major League debut on Sept. 5 of last season. He made nine relief appearances, with the last being a four-out, no-hit outing against the playoffbound Minnesota Twins. If Gabe gets into a game this season, the Speier Clan will have been represented in Major League Baseball in each of the last six decades. Chris Speier, the brother of
his grandfather Kurt, played for the San Francisco Giants from 1971 to 1989. Chris’ son, Justin, pitched in the big leagues from 1997 to 2009. The 2010s were covered by Gabe’s nine appearances last year, and he was expecting to check off the 2020s this season. “As a relief pitcher with minor league options, it was fair to assume that I was going to be sent up and down this year (without getting exposed to free agency),” he said. “I was happy about that. I figured that this would be a good time to prove myself.” Speier has been working on a changeup to add to his fastball and slider. His velocity was ranging from 93 to 96 mph during spring training. “My fastball-slider mix works really well against lefties,” he said. “My changeup was helping me get a lot of righties out, too. It’s something I’ve definitely been working on and getting more comfortable with.” Speier had “an anxious” spring training debut against San Diego on Feb. 24. He gave up a one-out triple to Edward Olivares before allowing a walk,
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loCal Cannabis Company DonaTes 500 n95 masks By CHRISTIAN WHITTLE NEWS-PRESS STAFF WRITER
I
ndia Amarina knows the importance of masks during a pandemic from experience. Before she became president of Pacific Grown Impact, the nonprofit arm of Carpinteria cannabis company Pacific Grown Organics, Ms. Amarina was in high school in Taiwan during its H1N1 outbreak.
“We were in class every day, but this is a lot more precautions being taken. Obviously now we’re in a digital world, so it’s a lot easier to track these things and engage with social distancing. It wasn’t a reality when we had H1N1, but the masks were everywhere. Every student had them, every person had them,” said Ms. Amarina. “I’m well versed with having boxes and boxes and stocks of N95
masks.” When news of COVID-19 began to hit U.S. media, Ms. Amarina and Collin Dvorak, her husband and CEO of Pacific Grown Organics, put in an order for N95 masks so their company would be prepared for an outbreak in the States. The masks were delayed for months and only just arrived two weeks ago, but in that time Pacific Grown Organics was able
to implement sufficient social distancing at its workplace and realized it would be best to give the masks to someone who could really use them. “We’ve been quite lucky because we’re not running as a large scale cultivation farm yet. We only have a skeleton set of staff, and they are all wonderfully flexible in managing switching around their shifts so they aren’t at the same time as
plasma. “Unfortunately, the medications that are available to treat this infection are not specifically designed to treat this infection. Just based on the anecdotal reports that I’ve been hearing, the response (to the medications) has not been great. So at this point right now it looks like convalescent plasma may be the best option,” Vitalant Medical Director Dr. Marissa Li said. Dr. Li explained that people who have recovered from COVID19 may have immune-boosting antibodies in their plasma called convalescent plasma. She said these antibodies can treat other COVID-19 patients. “You can just think of it as someone who has recovered from the infection, their body was able to mount a strong enough defense, they built enough tanks or anti-aircraft missiles. Whatever kind of weapon that their body built, that weapon is still floating around in their body. We can go there and extract that weapon and now put it in someone else’s body to help fight off infection,” Dr. Li said. She said that there is some debate on how effective convalescent plasma is at treating COVID-19, because there have only been two small case series published in China. One case had five patients, and the other had 10 patients. All 15 patients survived the infection, and doctors extubated over half of them. They did not have to depend on a breathing machine or ventilator. About 90% of the patients showed no evidence of the virus in their body after they received the convalescent plasma. Dr. Li said a convalescent plasma donor can come back every seven days to donate. The Food and Drug Administration recently allowed convalescent plasma transfusions as an investigational treatment. It is currently
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highway Closures planneD for roCk sCaling operaTion GAVIOTA The northbound lanes of Highway 101 north of the Gaviota tunnel will be closed intermittently from 9 a.m. to 3 p.m. May 6. The closures are in place to allow Caltrans crews to perform a rock scaling operation to enhance public safety. The California Highway Patrol will lead motorists during the rolling lane closures, which will allow Caltrans to clear rocks from the highway, according to officials. Electronic message boards will be activated informing motorists to be prepared to stop as they approach the work zone. Delays aren’t expected to exceed 10 minutes. The work will be performed by the Caltrans maintenance team of Buellton and engineers from San Luis Obispo. Motorists are reminded to move over and slow down when driving through construction zones. — Mitchell White
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LOTTERY RESULTS Saturday’s SUPER LOTTO: 4-7-21-37-43 Meganumber: 7 Friday’s MEGA MILLIONS: 28-30-31-35-66 Meganumber: 14 Friday’s DAILY DERBY: 10-04-11 TIME: 1:46:40 Saturday’s Daily 3: 2-3-3 / Evening: 9-4-2
Saturday’s DAILY 4: 6-0-2-7 Saturday’s FANTASY 5: 5-6-7-20-22 Saturday’s POWERBALL: 13-16-33-58-68 Meganumber: 24