Don Robbs shares stories from 50-plus years on local radio, TV

Don Robbs retired last year after more than 50 years on local radio and television. He broadcast University of Hawaii baseball for 40 years — more than 2,500 games by his calculation — and did play-by-play for Hawaii Islanders baseball games.

Robbs is best known for his sports coverage, but he was also a news director at KPOI and KHVH radio, and executive director at Hawaii Public Television.

Robbs has some great stories from his 50-plus years in the islands. Two of them are about men named Les.

HAVE RICE COOKER, WILL TRAVEL

Robbs covered UH baseball coach Les Murakami for nearly the coach’s entire career. Murakami helmed the Bows for 30 years and amassed an amazing 1,079 wins. Under his leadership, the Rainbows made it to the 1980 College World Series in Omaha, Neb., where they lost to Arizona in the championship series.

“I traveled with the team for 37 years,” Robbs recalled. “Les always brought an appliance to away games that no other coach carried: a rice cooker!”

Murakami usually had a suite wherever the team stayed. Reporters from both Honolulu newspapers and Robbs would be invited to his room after games, along with opposing coaches, the trainer, assistant coaches and scouts.

Instead of going to a restaurant, they had beer, wine and pupu in his suite. They’d cook meat and chicken from a local market on a hot plate.

“I really looked forward to it. We’d talk story until the wee hours of the morning. It turned everyone involved into an ohana,” Robbs said.

“He’d even have dinner parties at his home for New Year’s and Thanksgiving. If you didn’t show up, he’d call and want to know where you were, because he wanted you there.”

There was a certain Zen element to his coaching, Robbs believes. “I never saw Les thrown out of a game or even get into a major argument. He was the third-base coach in every game but was never hit by a ball. He could elegantly step back and let foul balls go by.”

THE GREAT RE-CREATOR

Robbs also spent a lot of time at Honolulu Stadium on King and Isenberg streets with another Les: Les Keiter.

The old stadium was made of wood and metal, and would shake when the crowd got excited. The joke was that the only thing keeping it together was the termites holding hands. Because of that, it was affectionately called the Termite Palace.

From 1961 until the mid-1970s, Honolulu Stadium was home to a Triple-A baseball team called the Hawaii Islanders. Robbs began calling their games for KGU radio in the early 1970s with another famed sportscaster, Les Keiter.

Keiter, who died in 2009 at age 89, was remarkable, Robbs said. “He finished his Channel 2 television sportscast at 6:30 p.m. and was always on time at Honolulu Stadium and ready to go on the air at 6:45 p.m. I don’t know how he did it.

“Keiter could remember every Major League score and story of that day. He had a photographic memory.”

What really set Keiter apart, Robbs thinks, is the way he re-created games. Many sports fans don’t know that 40 years ago it was prohibitively expensive to send broadcasters on the road to distant games.

“Most away games were re-created at that time for KGU radio. We made a few road trips throughout the year, but most of our radio broadcasts were constructed at home from the briefest of materials.”

In the Pacific Coast League, every stadium provided someone who would score the game and call KGU every so often with information. Another person on this end would answer the phone and write it down for the broadcasters.

“He’d give us the weather conditions and anything needed to set the scene,” Robbs recalled.

“A guy at the away stadium sent us just the essential information. We might be told the batter’s name, position and then, for example, 6-3, meaning he grounded to short and was thrown out at first. We had no idea how many pitches he faced, but would make that up for the listeners. We invented the details.

“Les was a master. He had a pencil and wood box, and he would hit it for sound effects: ‘Here’s the pitch … cluck … it’s a ground ball to shortstop. The throw to first is … in time! Two out.’”

The duo also had recordings of crowd noise to play in the background: cheering, booing, a guy yelling “Peanuts! Popcorn!”

One time the announcers lost contact with the press box for an away game and ran out of information. They had to make up something. Often they’d invent a rain delay.

On one such occasion Les Keiter ad-libbed, “Timeout has been called,” he said. “The umpires are going out (to) the mound. There seems to be something unusual happening out there.

“Uh-oh, and now the groundskeeper is coming out with a wheelbarrow and shovels. And they’re starting to restructure the mound. The other team is protesting.”

“And for a half-hour he described how they tore down and rebuilt the pitcher’s mound, and when we finally re-established the connection, we could continue with the game. Nobody seemed to know the difference. Most people thought all those games were broadcast live.”

If they got to the sixth or seventh inning and had gotten the last call and knew the game was over, and either one of them had dinner or something coming up, they’d go through the last three innings in about 15 minutes, Robbs chuckled.

STADIUM ORGANIST ROLLY WAY

Another memory that stands out for Robbs was the stadium organist, a woman named Rolly Wray. Her job was to play before and after games and during intermissions.

“She was terrific, one of the best ballpark organists I ever heard. She played Islander games for many years.

“She got in trouble with the umpires once. When they were walking in from center field to home plate, she played ‘Three Blind Mice.’

“Most times the umpires would just laugh, but the home-plate umpire one particular time didn’t find it funny at all. He told her, ‘Don’t do it tomorrow night or I’ll forfeit the game.’ It was an idle threat because he couldn’t really do it.”

O.J. AT THE HULA BOWL

“O.J. Simpson played at the old stadium in a Hula Bowl game in 1969,” Robbs recalled. The Heisman Trophy winner from the University of Southern California took a kickoff and ran down the sideline, 88 yards to a touchdown.

That was amazing in and of itself, Robbs said. But what made it even more so was that the referee on that side of the field was a man named Earl Galdeira. (His son, Lyle, would become a television anchor.)

“It was a muddy day, and Earl Galdeira ran right alongside Simpson. He was maybe 40 years old and kept up with one of the greatest running backs in football history. The sold-out crowd went crazy.”

Robbs told me other interesting stories I’ll save for future columns.

Don, you’re a treasure! Enjoy your retirement.

Bob Sigall, author of “The Companies We Keep” series of books, looks through his collection of old photos to tell stories of Hawaii people, places and companies. Contact him via email at sigall@yahoo.com.