Voice from the past will call Rainbow baseball on radio

The snow was deep and the lock was frozen on the car door a November 1978 morning when sportscaster Mel Proctor was preparing to go to work at Washington, D.C., radio station WTOP.

"I remember thinking, ‘a couple months ago I was living and working in Hawaii and, now, this? I must be the dumbest bleep in the world,’ " Proctor recalled.

"So, I called KGMB to see if I might be able to get my old job back," Proctor said. "Earl McDaniel, the station manager and my mentor, talked me out of it. He told me to try and see if I could (tough) it out for a year."

Thirty-seven years — and a lengthy resume of NBA and MLB jobs later — Proctor is back on the air here.

He’ll do Wednesday’s University of Hawaii baseball game from Loyola Marymount and the weekend series at UC Irvine for KKEA, 1420-AM. They are among at least 17 road games he is scheduled to do this season.

"My career game plan was to go away and do my thing for a while and then come back to Hawaii," Proctor said. "I admired what Les Keiter was able to do with his career in Philadelphia and Hawaii and thought, in the back of my mind, that was something I’d like to do, too. But then I got immersed in my career and …"

Proctor, now 64, did a mixed plate of Hawaii sports in the 1970s — high schools, UH, Hawaii Islanders, the Hawaiians of the World Football League, weekend sports anchor on KGMB and a Sunday night radio show –•before getting his big break, play-by-play for the then NBA champion Washington Bullets.

Before leaving, Proctor and his Maui-born wife, Julie, had their baseball-themed wedding in the bar at the Columbia Inn, complete with corned beef hash cake, "Take Me Out to the Ballgame" and vows of lifetime "no-cut contracts."

His job with the Bullets led to stints with the Baltimore Orioles, New Jersey Nets, Texas Rangers, San Diego Padres, Washington Nationals and Los Angeles Clippers wrapped around NFL games and network deals with Fox and NBC.

In that Proctor was among a notable fraternity of sportscasters — Harry Kalas, Al Michaels, Hank Greenwald, Ken Wilson, Allan Elconin, Matt Pinto, etc. — who launched themselves to big league opportunities from behind microphones at Honolulu Stadium, Aloha Stadium and Blaisdell Center.

"When Harry was still doing the Phillies’ games, we’d always end up talking about Hawaii," Proctor said. "People would say (to us), ‘You have a major league job.’ We’d say, ‘Yeah, but we were living in Hawaii.’ You couldn’t understand it unless you’d lived there."

The period is prominently mentioned in his book, "I Love The Work, But I Hate The Business."

In some years, Proctor did as many as 200 events, overlapping MLB and NBA.

When KKEA called to ask if he’d be interested in doing some UH baseball road games this year, Proctor seized the offer to jump in his car and make two- and three-hour drives from his Encinitas, Calif., home. "I was very thankful for the opportunity," Proctor said. "It means a lot to me and it is fun."

Several years after leaving Hawaii, Proctor and his wife were having breakfast at the Columbia Inn when a nearby patron gave him a long look. "Then he said to me, ‘Eh, where you been, vacation?’ "

In some respects, this year just ended a longer one.

Reach Ferd Lewis at flewis@staradvertiser.com or 529-4820.