GRANADA HILLS : Royals Pitcher Scores Big With Shaken Youths

Even professional baseball players aren’t immune to natural disasters.

When the Jan. 17 earthquake struck, Mark Gubicza, a pitcher for the Kansas City Royals, felt his Northridge house shake, heard the terrifying cry of his 2-year-old daughter, then, worst of all, had trouble getting to her because fallen furniture had blocked his path.

Though nobody was hurt, Gubicza remembers how neighbors, genuinely concerned, came over afterward to see how he and the family were doing.

So when Gubicza heard a few students from Our Savior’s First Lutheran School in Granada Hills were having a hard time adjusting in the aftermath of the 6.8-magnitude temblor, Gubicza could relate.

Paula Kuhn, a parent at Our Savior’s sister school in San Diego, had contacted various professional sports teams seeking help for the Granada Hills children--something that would give them a boost and get their minds off the shaking ground. In addition to the havoc it inflicted on their homes, the quake left their school with an estimated $500,000 in damages.

The Royals, with Gubicza knowing all too well just what the kids were feeling, were the first to respond.

The pitcher and the Royals organization decided to fly six students to Kansas City, Mo., in late July, and give them what Peggy Ash, the school’s principal, fondly refers to as “real royal treatment.”

The students got a tour of Kaufman Stadium, where the Royals play their home games, caught two games against the Chicago White Sox, lunched with Gubicza, met former batting champion George Brett, stayed in a five-star hotel, then endured a few somersaults at Worlds of Fun, an amusement park. The tab was paid for by the Royals organization and a fund-raising drive by the San Diego school.

On Tuesday, the same students, and a handful more, returned the hospitality to Gubicza during batting practice at Anaheim Stadium, when the Royals were in town to play the Angels. Crowding into box seats behind the backstop, they yelled their hellos, then held up a “Happy Birthday” banner. Gubicza turns 32 on Sunday.

“Now everybody’s going to know how old I am,” the pitcher joked, as he talked to the students from the field, the sound of ball on bat in the background.

Asked why he went to such extremes to help the students, some of whom had to live out of tents after the quake, Gubicza said, “Because it hit home, being here myself when it happened and having a little girl who went through it, too.

“It was tough for them, tough for everybody, and this was just a way of getting them away from it all, showing them Kansas City, getting their minds off it,” he said.

Kuhn thinks the recent fun has helped the children finally put the earthquake behind them.

Indeed, seventh-grader Larisa Bargman says she won’t remember the fish tank falling on her so much as she will her new Gubicza-autographed Royals hat.

And, Herman Dhillon, a sixth-grader who was pinned beneath his bed for what may have seemed an eternity, need only turn to his Gubicza-autographed baseball card to forget that awful shaking in the wee hours of the morning.

“They used to hear a shaking window and it would set them off,” Kuhn said. “We all have fear and we all have to conquer it. And I think they’re over it now.”