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S AT U R DAY, J A N UA RY 9, 2 0 21
Lasorda pitched several baseball saves for Santa Barbara By MARK PATTON NEWS-PRESS SENIOR WRITER
Tommy Lasorda liked to needle former Los Angeles Dodger scout Bill Geivett about his bias for baseball players from his alma mater of UCSB. “Geivett,” he once told the Gaucho Hall of Famer, “you love Santa Barbara so much, you’d like anybody even if they just drove down the 101 through Santa Barbara.” But that was also true of Lasorda, the former Dodgers manager who passed away late Thursday night at age 93. He appeared at fund-raisers to build UCSB’s Caesar Uyesaka Stadium and returned
16 years after its 1994 completion to help upgrade the facility. “I’ve done a lot of this because the baseball coaches need the help,” Lasorda said during his last UCSB appearance in 2010. “My wife says to me, ‘Don’ t you ever say no?’ and I said, ‘Yeah, a lot of times.’ So she says ‘When?’ “And I said, ‘When they ask me if I had enough to eat.’” Former UCSB coach Al Ferrer reminisced on Friday with several of the Gauchos who served as waiters for the first “A Night With Tommy” in 1992. “He’d go up to one of them and say, ‘This pasta is really good … Think you can get me a little more?’” Ferrer said. “Then
a little later, he’d call over a different player and ask him the same thing.” He earned his meal, however, by remaining long after his speech to take photographs with everyone who had attended. “He had to go back to L.A. to catch a flight to Detroit — he was supposed to speak at some engagement for General Motors for a fee of something like $50,000,” Ferrer recalled. “But he still stuck around late to take those photos even though he spoke to us for free.” Lasorda filled his plate during the 71 years he spent with the Dodgers as a player, scout, coach, manager and frontoffice executive. He led them to World
Series titles in both 1981 and 1988, as well as to four National League pennants and eight division titles during his tenure as manager from 1977 to 1996. He was elected to baseball’s Hall of Fame a year after his retirement and then returned to the dugout in 2000 to coach the U.S. National Team to the gold medal at the Olympic Games in Sydney. Geivett, who would leave the Dodgers to become the general manager of the Colorado Rockies, said Lasorda’s passion was legendary. He recalled how they once interviewed “this kid” who was in search of a job when he came to Major League Baseball’s Winter Meetings of 1999. He Lasorda remained quiet while he
Homeless during COVID City continues to monitor population amid stay-at-home order
asked the kid questions. “But when I’m done,” Geivett said, “Tommy just starts screaming at the kid, going, ‘I can just tell that you’re not tough enough! That you can’t handle the long hours, and you can’t pay the price you need to pay to work in baseball!’ “The kid then stands up and says, ‘Hey Tommy, you’re wrong — I am tough enough, and I will be in baseball.’ The kid leaves, and Tommy and I agree that, yeah, he’s tough enough to make it.” The kid wound up working for the Rockies. Jay Lucas, who left UCSB in 1988 to become the Dodgers’ director of media
COVID-19 vaccines for essential workers County describes phases of distribution By GRAYCE MCCORMICK NEWS-PRESS STAFF WRITER
KENNETH SONG / NEWS-PRESS
A woman who did not want to be identified and a man who identified himself as “D” were sheltering Friday at De la Guerra Plaza in Santa Barbara.
By GRAYCE MCCORMICK NEWS-PRESS STAFF WRITER
As Santa Barbara residents follow the most recent stay-at-home order, some locals don’t have a home at which they can stay. To prevent further spread of the growing number of COVID-19 cases, CDC and state guidance advises cities against breaking up encampments or encouraging movement. In November, the city put up “No camping” signs near the waterfront to reduce the amount of encampments in public places. While the effort proved to be effective, the city is not planning to put up any more signs. City Environmental Services Manager René Eyerly told the News-Press that Santa Barbara is allowing those experiencing homelessness to hang tight in their encampments for a few reasons. “We’d like to get through the new stay-athome order and wait until we have a better idea of how the vaccinations are being rolled out,” she said. “As you can imagine, our shelters are quite full right now, so there’s not a lot of beds available for the campers either.” Homeless and unhoused individuals are set to receive their vaccinations in Phase 1B Tier 2 of the rollout, which is estimated to occur between early February 2021 and mid-March 2021. While Ms. Eyerly said she isn’t sure of the strategy that will be used to vaccinate the unhoused, she said she imagines it will be
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A man wheels his bike near a homeless camp site at Pershing parking lot.
coordinated through County Behavioral Wellness. But she said there’s not a whole lot the city is able to do right now because of the CDC guidance and the pandemic. These days, the city monitors and cleans encampments daily, along with helping individuals consider services. “We’ve had a few occasions over the last few months where we have needed to remove
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Amid the hectic whirlwind of the COVID-19 pandemic and the vaccine rollout, it can be difficult to keep the phases, tiers and business classifications straight. However, Phase 1 essential workers in Santa Barbara County are rapidly approaching their turn to receive the first dose of the COVID-19 vaccine. Here is the timeline of the rollout and who classifies as an essential worker who will be eligible for a vaccine in Phase 1. First things first. As of Thursday, the Santa Barbara County Public Health Department confirmed that while subject to change, officials’ best estimate of when the vaccination of essential workers will begin is early February, as part of Phase 1B Tier 1. Beginning in December 2020, the county launched into Phase 1A, which has three tiers. Everyone in Phase 1A is scheduled to be vaccinated between December 2020 and February 2021. Tier 1, which is already underway and close to complete, includes staff of acute care hospitals, psych entities, correctional facility hospitals, staff/residents in long-term care settings serving older and high-risk individuals, dialysis center staff and EMS personnel providing EMS services. Tier 2 includes intermediate care facilities, home health/home care workers, community health workers and primary, correctional and urgent care clinics. Finally, Tier 3 includes speciality clinics, lab workers, dental and pharmacy (if not included previously). Dr. Van Do-Reynoso, the county public health director, announced Thursday that Santa Barbara County received permission to distribute the vaccine concurrently to all three tiers in the first phase. “The CDC comes out with broad guidelines … There’s that tiny loophole based upon their epidata,” she said at a Zoom webinar Thursday. “At the local level in Tier 1 Phase 1A, we saw that with the availability of the vaccine, due to hesitancy, we were able to move to 1B, and now we’re given permission to run it concurrently. “If there are continual outbreak situations in a given jurisdiction, the Public Health Department has the ability to move the sector higher up,” she said. “So here, we are considering moving up our homeless shelters, jails, juvenile
halls and personnel. That’s the flexibility we do have as a local jurisdiction.” Phase 1B Tiers 1 and 2 are set to receive the vaccine between early February 2021 and mid-March 2021. Tier 1 includes persons age 75 and older and one of three sectors of essential workers. The first round of essential workers to receive the vaccine will be: food/ grocery and agriculture workers, education and childcare, and emergency services (firefighters, law enforcement, probation officers and corrections). Within the food and agriculture sector includes workers supporting groceries, pharmacies, convenience stores and other retail that sells food or beverage products, animal/ pet food, customer support service, IT support staff for online orders, workers supporting restaurant carry-out and quick serve food operations including food preparation, carry-out and delivery food employees, and pickup/takeout or delivery workers. Also included are food manufacturer employees and their supplier employees, harvesting facilities, slaughter facilities, processing facilities, beverage production facilities and food packaging operations and processing workers. The list also includes farmers, ranch workers, agribusiness support services, cannabis growers, agricultural and commodity inspection, fuel and storage facilities, warehouse workers, workers supporting products for home gardens, workers essential for food assistance programs, employees engaged in transport, production and distribution of chemicals, animal agriculture workers, workers who support forest products and more. The complete list of each classification can be found at https:// covid19.ca.gov/essential-workforce. The education and childcare section includes workers supporting public and private childcare establishments, pre-K establishments, K-12 schools, colleges and universities for purposes of distance learning, provision of school meals, or care, supervision and instruction of minors. In addition, essential workers are also workers and instructors supporting academies and training facilities and courses for the purpose of graduating students and cadets that compose the essential workforce for all identified critical sectors. Please see vaccines on A6
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camps, primarily in our creeks or waterways because of the imminent health hazard,” Ms. Eyerly said. “The primary piece we’re doing right now is continuing to monitor them and interact with them.” From city rangers to fire personnel and police to CityNet and other nonprofits, people work together to manage encampments, control the trash buildup, install port-aPlease see homeless on A8
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Obituaries............. A8 Sudoku................. A5 Weather................ A8
Wednesday’s SUPER LOTTO: 4-29-33-34-44 Meganumber: 21
Friday’s DAILY 4: 6-1-4-8
Friday’s MEGA MILLIONS: 3-6-16-18-58 Meganumber: 11
Friday’s FANTASY 5: 2-16-20-24-35
Friday’s DAILY DERBY: 12-08-03 Time: 1:46.47
Wednesday’s POWERBALL: 1-20-22-60-68 Meganumber: 3
Friday’s DAILY 3: 0-0-8 / Sunday’s Midday 8-4-5