Three months ago I wrote about Al Michaels, the great sportscaster whose early professional years were in Hawaii. When he moved here in 1968, he often worked with Chuck Leahey, who founded a three-generation broadcasting legacy with son Jim and grandson Kanoa.
Re-creating games
In the days before satellites, transmission of live sporting events from the mainland by radio or television wasn’t possible.
The Hawaii Islanders baseball team began playing at Honolulu Stadium on King Street in 1961. Their games were broadcast on KGU radio live when the team was in town, but when they went on the road, broadcasters would re-create the games in the studio.
KGU was located on the third floor of the Honolulu Advertiser building, next to the Columbia Inn. The announcers would get the play-by-play, inning-by-inning information from a United Press International teletype machine or by phone.
They would then re-create the game, as if they were calling it live, by adding sound effects, taped background noise and crowd cheers, or boos, and even a wooden stick to simulate the sound of a bat hitting the ball.
Re-creating baseball games was regarded as a broadcasting art form, and Hawaii served as a training ground for numerous exceptional play-by-play announcers, thanks to the presence of the Hawaii Islanders.
“Les Keiter and Harry Kalas were among the great ones,” Gene Kaneshiro said. “However, I believe our own Chuck Leahey was the most entertaining because of his very relaxed style. He used to describe the scenery, the weather and the people in the stands, along with the players and the game.
“When Al Michaels arrived in 1968, he and Chuck became broadcast partners, and they re-created games together for a couple years, with Chuck showing Al the ropes, and eventually they both excelled in bringing the games to us.”
During the broadcast, usually around the third or fourth inning, Kaneshiro, who owned the Columbia Inn, would bring a thermos of coffee and sometimes a light snack up to the studio to keep them happy. “They allowed me to stay to watch and enjoy their re-creation.
“After the broadcast, one of them or both would stop by the bar to return the thermos and have a cold one. That’s how I got to know Al Michaels and Chuck Leahey.”
Get past the dogs
Leahey’s career in broadcasting began in 1952 at a radio station in Kaneohe. “The station I wanted to work for had three dogs tied up outside the door to keep the creditors away.”
Leahey had to evade them to apply for the broadcasting job. “When I got by the dogs, the owner was so impressed he gave me the job.”
Pioneering broadcasts
Advertiser columnist Bob Krauss said Chuck Leahey was a former Navy chief who “pioneered rural sportscasting on Oahu from a platform on a Castle High School telephone pole.”
He remembered Leahey and his broadcast partner, Al Michaels, kicking off the 1969 Interscholastic League of Honolulu (ILH) football season with a play-by play call of the Farrington-Kalani game.
They had to sit in a broadcast booth at Honolulu Stadium that leaked when it rained, swayed like a coconut palm in the wind and got so hot in the afternoon sun that Leahey and Michaels would sometimes work in their underwear, Krauss wrote.
During Kona weather, towels were handed to the broadcasters to wipe away the sweat. But these inconveniences were minor compared with the hilarious hardships that Leahey went through in some rural games.
“That was a real adventure,” Leahey said. Many people think that a sportscaster just has to go to the games, sit down and talk into a microphone.
Numbers
“Well, there’s more. For example, the first time I broadcast a game at Waialua High School, they had marked the field at 10-yard intervals. But there weren’t any numbers on the lines. You couldn’t tell the 10-yard line from the 30-yard line.
“I suggested they put numbers on. They said there wasn’t time. Well, I had a sack of lime in the car for emergencies, so I put the numbers on myself. At the next game, they had the numbers on but they were upside down. I had to erase them and put down new numbers.”
Pipikaula and poi
Leahey said sports fans in rural Oahu could be enthusiastic and appreciative.
“Sometimes they’re almost too appreciative,” he believed. He remembered a Hawaiian guy in Waipahu who was so thankful that Leahey pronounced his son’s name correctly, he offered him dinner.
“He brought me some pipikaula (Hawaiian beef jerky) and poi about two minutes before game time, then sat there to see that I ate it.
“You don’t know how tough it is to broadcast a football game with a mouthful of poi!” Leahey said, laughing.
Crowded shack
In the 1950s most rural high schools did not have a broadcast booth for radio announcers. A few had a little shack for the public address (PA) announcer, who called the game for those in attendance.
“When you get the PA announcer and his two spotters, and the kid who keeps the transformer running and his friend — I don’t know why but he always has a friend — and me, the sportscaster, and my two spotters, and the booth is 8 by 5 feet, it’s damn full!”
Some had a floor and ceiling but no back wall. “One night at Waipahu I stepped back and fell out of the booth. When we went off the air, the engineer back at the radio station wanted to know what happened. ‘I fell out of the booth,’ I told him. He didn’t believe me.
“But a woman in the crowd turned to her husband and said, ‘Edgar, I told you those sportscasters drink a lot.’ I think it was the harness on my microphone cord that broke my fall. It also almost broke my neck.”
Some fields in the 1950s had broadcast booths, but they were not very high off the ground. “People wonder why a sportscaster stands up when he’s broadcasting a rural Oahu football game,” Leahey continued.
“That’s to give him an extra two feet of elevation. If you don’t stand up, you can’t see what’s going on in the end zone.”
Samoan names
Leahey said one of the biggest challenges in broadcasting rural Oahu football games is pronouncing the Samoan names.
“Some have names you can’t believe. One night at Kahuku, I ran into a name I thought was a misprint: Iafata Manumanamalingua. But Harry Kahuanui, the head coach at Roosevelt, told me it was a real name.
“Harry said not to worry because the kid wouldn’t play much. Much!?? He only caught three punts, made 18 unassisted tackles and blocked all over the field. I was going crazy.
“Finally, somebody told me his brother was in the crowd. “I got hold of his brother and told him. ‘Look, I’ll give you $2 if you sit here for the rest of the game. Every time I poke you in the ribs, you yell into the microphone. Iafata Manumanamalingua!’
“By the end of two seasons, I had that name right at the tip of my tongue. The family was really proud of me.”
Lights out
At one night game Leahey called in Waianae, the lights at their football field went out because the circuit was overloaded. So, they played the game with only half the lights on at a time.
“When the teams were at one end of the field, they turned the lights on at that end. When somebody ran the ball to the other end of the field, they switched the lights.
“The adventure of broadcasting one of those games is fabulous,” Leahey believed. “People out there really love their football. If you can call a game under those conditions, it’s better than broadcasting the Rose Bowl.”
Chuck Leahey’s son Jim followed in his father’s footsteps, as did his grandson Kanoa. Their three generations of local sports broadcasting have made a significant contribution to the local sports scene.
Al Michaels left Hawaii after three years to broadcast the Cincinnati Reds. A few years later he signed on with ABC and covered “The Wide World of Sports,” NFL football, Major League Baseball, basketball and horse racing.
He was the announcer for the US vs. USSR “Miracle on Ice” hockey match at the 1980 Winter Olympics and many other Olympic events.
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Bob Sigall is the author of the five “The Companies We Keep” books. Contact him at Sigall@Yahoo.com or sign up for his free email newsletter at RearviewMirrorInsider.com.
