Blog: Every game brings a shot at victory

Like a lot of kids lucky enough to have grown up in Honolulu, I enjoyed playing little league sports year-round. Unlike our counterparts in less temperate climes on the U.S. continent, we Hawaii kids don’t have to slog through long winters between little league soccer, football, and baseball seasons. I was a pretty good soccer player (up until surfing took over as my favorite pastime), and I could catch just about anything hit into the outfield. And although I have fond memories of scoring glorious game-winning goals on the soccer pitch, I was a bit of a choker on the baseball diamond at game-time. My clearest memory of those league games is waking up with my head on second base after taking a screaming line drive to the chin out in right field, and then being awash in a blur of blood, ice, and picnic napkins. Actually walking off of the field on my own power remains my greatest achievement while participating in America’s pastime as a boy.

Back then, I never really gave much thought to the subtleties of baseball—in terms of coaching, pitching, hitting, fielding and base-running. All I knew was that I wanted to hit, score, and field the ball correctly. While living in California in my 20s, friends and I regularly attended Major League games in the Bay Area, braving the chill at Candlestick Park in San Francisco and at the Oakland Coliseum. I began to understand and love the game for its strategies at a time when players like Barry Bonds, Mark McGuire, and Sammy Sosa were electrifying fans with home run heroics and the New York Yankees were the Evil Empire (I still call them that, although, admittedly, it’s because I am a lifelong Philadelphia Phillies fan). It was a heady time for baseball fans.

Baseball also became a new way for my father and I to bond. We were very close, and our conversations about baseball had actually become about the game, and not simply my trying to talk my way out of catching the bus to Aina Haina for practice as I often did as a kid. When I moved back to Hawaii, my father and I would regularly attend University of Hawaii games Les Murakami Stadium. Mom and my sisters would run off to do their lady afternoons, and Dad and I would load up on ball park staples and talk about the team. More than just fun, those afternoons and evening became a meaningful, important part of my friendship with my father. Just a couple of buddies catching a game. My first date with my wife was watching a game with my father at The Les. My sister Shannon and Dad shared a similar connection with the game while she lived in Chicago—Dad flying in to catch a few Cubs games at legendary Wrigley Field. Dad got Shannon into the game, and she remains a die-hard Cubbies fan.

With the start of the 2010 UH Baseball season, and, of course, the Major League season, I was eager to get out to the park and settle into my love for the game. And although Dad’s gone now and those special days at the park with him are over, the love for the game he instilled in me carries on, if only as a way for me to keep his memory close to heart.

UH lost that first game, but the excitement of the rest of the people at the park was palpable. It was clear that a whole lot of people and their families on Oahu share the same affection for the game as mine did. Septuagenarians couples sharing a Coke and AM radio headphones, fathers and sons, packs of UH students, not to mention sentimental journalists and their rowdy friends, all turned up to support the team and enjoy the atmosphere.

When I first heard a boy of about eight or ten imitating his heckling father, I was taken aback. But then I realized that teaching your son to rattle opposing players from the stands really isn’t any different than teaching him when to expect an intentional walk or a bunt or a stolen base.

The UH team looks good. They could do well in the Western Athletic Conference, or simply be mediocre. That’s the beauty of the game: you can’t possibly win them all, but every game brings a shot at victory. It’s hokey, little league philosophy, and it works.