The first time it was suggested that he get behind a radio microphone by himself, Jim Leahey was, for one of the few instances in his career, rendered momentarily speechless.
“I was like, ‘…what?’” Leahey recalls.
Now, 60 years after his debut calling boxing as a 15-year-old, Leahey said he is stepping away from a local sportscasting career in which an ability to paint vivid word pictures made him a legend.
“Yes, it is official,” Leahey, 75, said Monday. “It is time to sail along into the sunset, to take my leave. It is part of a natural progression.”
Leahey, who last month completed the season as the radio voice of University of Hawaii baseball, first disclosed his intention over the weekend at a roast for former boss and broadcast sidekick Rick Blangiardi.
“I enjoyed working with Josh Pacheco and Scotty Robbs (on UH baseball), but I’m 75 years old now and don’t want to take a position from guys who are coming up and working hard,” Leahey said after conferring with his wife, Toni.
“It has been a lot of seasons, a lot of memories,” said Leahey, who began working alongside his father, Chuck, in the 1960s and later teamed up with his son, Kanoa, in a broadcasting triple play unique in the state.
In the course of a career that saw him alternate between radio and TV — and sometimes do simulcasts across both platforms — Leahey spanned the TV spectrum appearing on KITV, KGMB, KIKU, KHNL, KFVE, KHET and cable.
He also did preseason NFL Seahawks games for KING in Seattle.
In Hawaii he became such a fixture that youngsters on basketball courts and in parks, were known to imitate his, “UH wins! UH wins!” calls in their games.
Legend has it that once, when the UH broadcast rights contract changed hands, a governor called up the UH athletic director and ordered him to, “make sure Leahey is doing those games.”
Leahey grew up with a fascination for the radio he laid in front of on the floor of Naval housing. He accompanied his father, Chuck, the 14th Naval District athletic director and colorful part-time broadcaster, to military sports events, absorbing the art, much like his son, Kanoa, would do a generation later.
“Pops was scheduled to do a boxing card for KGU radio from Conroy Bowl at Schofield when he came down with pleurisy and he asked me to do it,” Leahey recalls. “So, I went up set up my (equipment) and did the best I could.”
After returning from service in Vietnam and getting a graduate degree from UH, Leahey taught at Campbell High for a decade and did some announcing.
When KGMB’s Bob Sevey sought a successor to Joe Moore as sports director, he enticed Leahey with an offer to double his teaching salary, asking, “When are you going to start thinking about your own children instead of everybody else’s?”
Leahey said, “I told him, ‘I’ll try it for a year.’ And, I never went back (to school).”
In the mid-1980s when Blangiardi left KGMB to run independent station KIKU (which became KHNL) and masterminded a deal to televise UH sports on a scale of more than 100 events a year, he hired Leahey for ironman play-by-play. “Some years I was doing as many as seven different UH sports a year and getting fired by Rick every other week,” Leahey said. “It was great.”
The highlight? “The 56-14 victory over Brigham Young (in 1989), the last game we did together,” said Leahey, who punctuated it exclaiming, “This is better than statehood!”
Leahey said, “BYU came in arrogant, as always. After what was it — not winning for 10 straight years against BYU? — damn that was good. I think it was the best game that UH ever played. The sound, the excitement of that crowd, is something you’ll always remember.”
Leahey said, “I just hope that the people who have listened to me or watched me, thought I did a good job for them, that they saw the picture, the theater of the mind, that I was able to lead them through.”
Reach Ferd Lewis at flewis@staradvertiser.com or 529-4820.
