Former South Coast High School Rivals Keep Professional Baseball Well-Armed

A January rainstorm threw down on Santa Barbara as furiously as a Nolan Ryan fastball, turning every baseball diamond in town into a quagmire.

But there would be no day off in Mudville for local pitching guru Tom Myers, the area scouting supervisor for the Los Angeles Dodgers.

He borrowed the keys to the Bob Brontsema Player Development Facility at UC Santa Barbara and summoned two active baseball alumni from rival high schools: Gabe Speier from Dos Pueblos and Kevin Gowdy from Santa Barbara.

Speier, a former DP Charger, had already defied the odds and made it to the Major Leagues.

Gowdy, a former Santa Barbara Don, had been a second-round draft pick that the Philadelphia Phillies once bet $3.5 million would get there, too. He’s now in the Dodgers’ farm system.

“I was having Kevin throw for me, and I brought Gabe to watch,” Myers told Noozhawk. “I told Gabe, ‘I’d like you to see what his stuff looks like … And I want you to talk to him.’

“We went to lunch afterward and he talked to Kevin about the mental side of the game, because that’s Gabe’s strength.”

It is one big, happy baseball family in Santa Barbara, and Myers is one of its biggest patriarchs.

The former UCSB pitcher and coach, who switched to the Dodgers from the Chicago Cubs organization after the 2021 season, has also run the Santa Barbara Grizzlies Baseball Group for the last 12 years.

He fields teams at the 14U, high school and collegiate levels. His Coastal Dodgers club won the Gold Coast Collegiate Championship last week with a 3-2, walk-off victory over the Malibu Marlins.

“For a resort town — and a golf and aquatics town — Santa Barbara has developed a strong baseball vibe,” Myers said. “There’s a real boom at the youth level.

“Goleta Valley (South) and DP (Dos Pueblos) Little Leagues have gotten some good numbers. There are those active dads and coaches who want to make baseball really strong in town, and that’s great.”

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