Ferd Lewis: This Ferd bids aloha after career of 50 years

When a CBS TV executive in New York phoned the sports department of the Honolulu Advertiser in the 1970s, he told a clerk, “I’m returning Ferd’s call.”

The clerk asked, “Which one?” prompting the caller to exclaim an exasperated, “Geez, how many Ferds do you have?”

In addition to the legendary Ferd Borsch, who would be the newspaper’s baseball writer for 40 years, there was a rookie, me.

From today there will be no more Ferds on the sports pages in Honolulu. At least for the time being. After 47 years — 36 at The Advertiser and nearly 11 at the Star-Advertiser and 50 in the business overall, retirement beckons after the almost daily joy of writing for these pages and its readers.

Much of it began at the old Honolulu Stadium, continuing on at Aloha Stadium, with the hope that it might conclude when the new stadium rose in Halawa. But that has begun to look like it might take a while, certainly requiring more time and patience than someone closing in on age 69 and headed to physical therapy might have.

It has been a wonderful ride since first venturing into a newsroom at age 15 and it has been a privilege to share the stories of so many athletes and teams from a front row seat in one of the most interesting periods in our state’s sports history.

Hopefully the stories and columns succeeded in informing, amusing, stimulating or infuriating more than they failed.

Along the way there have been opportunities to work alongside some real pros and share press boxes with three generations of the Family Leahey, father Chuck, son Jim and grandson Kanoa, as well as two of the Robbs and Sakamoto lineage, not to mention many others who were characters in their own right.

There have been few regrets. Although changing plans after a Lamaze class to go directly home instead of stopping by Blaisdell Center to see the second half of the Chaminade and Virginia basketball game in 1982 was something my wife wouldn’t let me forget.

But mostly it was memories made watching people and their moments. The late Farrington High football coach Skippa Diaz — motto “bite down and go hard” — taping up as a sideline symbol of solidarity as if to be ready to go into an OIA Championship game alongside his players.

Seeing the tears cascade down Jesse (Takamiyama) Kuhaulua’s jowls when his top knot was snipped off in sumo’s retirement ritual in the ring in Tokyo. Watching Chad (Akebono) Rowan sweat as snowflakes fell in January at the Meiji Shrine, where he was installed as the first foreign yokozuna in the centuries-old sport.

Witnessing Stan Sheriff step off in the dirt the outline of an arena that perhaps only he believed would get built. And the sadness of his not being around to see it rise and filled before his death.

Sitting in one of those creaky wooden huts that comprised the UH athletics in the 1970s as Donnis Thompson shared her vision of an athletic program for women and the certainty that volleyball could someday be huge. This coming off a time when the only woman on scholarship was a drum major. Watching Nani Cockett take over a basketball game or Tes Whitlock end one with a buzzer beater.

Listening as elderly fans beseeched football coach Bob Wagner to please beat BYU before they died. Then, Wagner pointedly reminding his players, “It doesn’t have to be close.” And, for consecutive years, it wasn’t.

Baseball coach Les Murakami defiantly looking around the College World Series in 1980 noting, “most of these people don’t think we should be here.” And, then, damn near winning the whole thing.

Watching a skinny kid, then known as Barry Obama, play ILH basketball.

Finally, after seasons of competing with — and usually losing to — Stephen Tsai in the race to not be the last one to file a game story on deadline, it will be somebody else’s turn to incur the dreaded “Gotta have it now!” call from the editors.

Mahalo for your time today and in the past.

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