Jim Leahey was a homer.
Broadcasters seem to consider that a serious slur, but this isn’t speaking ill of the dead. It’s a compliment.
Leahey died last week as the greatest broadcaster — sports or otherwise — Hawaii has ever known. He probably would have bristled at all of the tweets referring to him as ‘the GOAT,’ knowing that he could come up with a better way to define greatness than to spew an acronym out of words created by Muhammad Ali 60 years ago.
I can’t do that. So yes, Leahey was the Greatest Of All Time.
You could hear his love for Hawaii with every word, you could feel it with every breath. But what made him special, to me, is how he put truth above all else even at the end when it seemed he could barely see the monitor, much less the field. If Hawaii’s pitcher fails to back up third base to turn a triple into a run, you better believe he is going to mention it. Maybe it’s because I just turned off the sickening hype show ESPN calls Top Rank Boxing, but holding athletes accountable when your checks are signed by the same people is very, very rare today.
That didn’t matter to Leahey.
“To lie to the fans is unthinkable,” Leahey said in the early 1970s. “If you’re not entirely truthful, it becomes a sham — a big shibai. Then you’re not doing any good for the sport, the players, the fans or anybody else — including yourself.”
The truth drove Leahey, and even most of the targets of his honesty appreciated it.
Can you think of anyone else who could tell June Jones that his new UH logo “looks like it has been run over by a truck” and remain good friends with him?
Who else could suggest that Hawaii Pacific change its nickname from the “Sea Warriors” to the “Fighting Homeless” because its basketball team didn’t have a gym and draw a laugh from Tony Sellitto and the rest of the athletic department?
Jim Leahey had a Heisman vote for ages, and in 2017 his ballot had local boys McKenzie Milton and Jordan Ta’amu (who played just seven games) in the top two spots, followed by Lamar Jackson. He left out landslide winner Baker Mayfield and runner-up Bryce Love. The next year Tua Tagovailoa entered his ballot, joining Milton and Ta’amu on what is undoubtedly the only ballot in the long history of the award that contained three quarterbacks from Hawaii. There was no room for Cole McDonald and Chevan Cordeiro, much less winner Kyler Murray.
This is the kind of thing that used to drive me crazy before I gave up on the National Baseball Hall of Fame and its secret society of irresponsible voters.
I always meant to ask him about his Heisman voting the next time I saw him in the stands at Les Murakami Stadium, but I never did. He seemed to spend a LOT of time outside the booth doing homework, but I don’t know how much ever got done, given the endless parade of people like me settling in next to him for “just a few minutes.”
Unlike the mysterious scribe who voted for Huston Street in this year’s baseball hall ballot, I am certain that Leahey would not hide. He would probably relish the chance to defend his choices, giving his inquisitor something they have never considered before. I wonder if he even knew that he was always the smartest person in the room.
So yes, the man who refused to call the continent the mainland and borrowed “better than statehood” from Kawika Hallums to describe a victory over BYU was a homer, depending on your definition. Surprise, surprise.
In 1949, a reader named Lawrence Houston wrote a letter to the editor to the Honolulu Star-Bulletin imploring local broadcasters to learn something from the World Series broadcast by Mel Allen and Red Barber and accused the local boys of “yelling, heavy breathing, whoopee type of announcing.”
It kept the editorial pages alive for the rest of the month, with the overall opinion being that Les Keiter’s local homer style was what the public wanted most. It must have worked, as Chuck Leahey led to Harry Kalas, Al Michaels, Ken Wilson, Don Robbs, Bobby Curran and now to Felipe Ojastro and Kanoa Leahey.
That’s a long line of homers who gave people what they want, and Jim Leahey was better than all of them.
