Don Robbs, voice of UH baseball for 40 years, dies at 88
CINDY ELLEN RUSSELL / CRUSSELL@STARADVERTISER.COM
Broadcaster Don Robbs is retiring after 40 years of covering UH Rainbow baseball, in May 2016. He is pictured in the press box at Les Murakami Stadium in Manoa. Robbs, a Hawaii broadcasting icon for 50 years known by sports fans as the voice of University of Hawaii baseball for 40 of them, died today.
COURTESY OF DON ROBBS / 1957
Don Robbs
Don Robbs, a Hawaii broadcasting icon for 50 years known by sports fans as the voice of University of Hawaii baseball for 40 of them, died today.
Robbs, who turned 88 on Monday, died peacefully at his Pearl City home of natural causes with family by his side, his son, Scott Robbs, said.
Don Robbs’ vocation was usually as a radio and TV newscaster or executive, mostly in Hawaii. But he was the voice of Rainbow baseball for more than 2,000 games, starting in the 1970s, when he came up with the idea of putting the emerging UH baseball team on the air when he was news director at KHVH. Robbs did his last game in 2016.
The press box at the Murakami Stadium at UH is named after him and Jim Leahey, another Hawaii sportscasting legend who died in 2023.
Robbs was inducted into UH’s Sports Circle of Honor in 2015.
He was born in Litchfield, Minn., and came to Hawaii in 1962 after serving in the Army. Robbs was the newsman with the hugely popular “Poi Boys” at KPOI early in his Hawaii broadcast career.
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He worked for Japan’s largest public relations firm at the 1964 Olympics. Then, after a year at a radio station in San Francisco, Robbs returned to Hawaii.
During the 1960s and ’70s he did a variety of TV and radio jobs including news anchor at KHVH-TV (which later became KITV), hosting “Hawaii AM” (which became “The Don Robbs Show”), and following Al Michaels and Ken Wilson as Les Keiter’s No. 2 on Hawaii Islanders radio broadcasts. He also later worked in management at PBS Hawaii and ESPN’s Honolulu radio affiliate, which has long held the radio rights for UH sports.
He also briefly owned a radio station in Oregon.
Scott Robbs followed his father’s path as a broadcaster in Hawaii, covering a variety of UH sports on radio and TV since the 1990s, and broadcasting as Don’s partner in his last three Rainbows games in 2016.
Don Robbs’ other survivors include his brother Rick, step-daughter Susan Leong, daughter-in-law Dori and grandchildren Iliahi Robbs, Oliana Robbs, Blake Kondo and Te’a Leong.
The family is undecided about a public memorial service, Scott Robbs said today.
