Honolulu’s Little League team made us all proud last week, winning the World Series against Curacao 13-3. The Hawaii team was undefeated and outscored its opponents 60-5.
In this column, I thought I’d look back 61 years, to the first Hawaii team to capture a winners bracket game at the 15th Little League World Series in Williamsport, Pa. It took place in August 1961. The team was the Hilo Americans.
Back in 1961 Hawaii had 27 Little Leagues scattered on all islands. The Hilo Americans all-star team’s first challenge was to beat its crosstown rivals, the heavily favored Hilo Nationals all-stars.
Hilo Americans catcher Russell Arikawa remembers the Nationals had the bases loaded with two outs. “We changed pitchers and I was moved to third base,” Arikawa recalls. “I had never played third base in my life.
“The Hilo National batter hit a high grounder to me. I turned my head away from the ball and lifted my shoulder. Somehow the ball lodged between my neck and shoulder. I stepped on third base for the force out and the inning was over!”
The Hilo Americans won 5-2. “When I see members of the Nationals today, they still kid me about that play,” Arikawa laughs.
Then they beat Kauai — the final score was 6-3 — to play Maui for the neighbor island championship. In a squeaker, they got past them 5-4.
On Aug. 12 the Hilo Americans met the Oahu champions, Pearl City, at Fort DeRussy.
The Pearl City team had a no-hitter through four innings and led 4-0. Hilo could not get anything going.
But in the fifth inning, Hilo managed to score five runs on just one hit, a single by Randy Yamada. Hilo did it with two walks, two hit batters, two errors and one sacrifice fly. Hilo beat Pearl City 5-4 to win the state baseball crown.
Two days later the “Cinderella” Hilo Americans played Japan, the champs of all the Asian countries bordering the Pacific. Hilo beat Japan 10-3 to capture the Pacific Region Little League championship and earn the trip to Williamsport for the World Series.
From Hilo to Williamsport
It took over $60,000 (in today’s dollars) to send the team to Pennsylvania. The district had only half of it. But the community came forward and opened its wallets.
Fourteen players from Hilo went to Williamsport: 11-year-olds Milton Shiroma, Eugene Narimatsu, Keith Imaino, Scott Leithead, Gary Matsumoto Jr. and Yamada, and 12-year-olds Carl Otsuka, Clyde Kojiro, Adrian Hussey, Jerry Kitagawa, Russell Hayashi, Dennis Eblacas, Alan Kinoshita and Arikawa.
The team was led by manager Ben Inouye, coach Gary Matsumoto Sr. and Richard Fujie, Hilo American Little League president.
The Hilo team boarded a flight at 6 p.m. Aug. 18 for Honolulu. Twenty-six hours and five flights later, the team arrived in Williamsport.
The boys carried shoe boxes with musubi, fried chicken, teriyaki meat and other snacks in case, as parents feared correctly, they weren’t fed on their flights to Pennsylvania. Arikawa said they were hungry when they landed in Chicago and rushed to a restaurant to eat before boarding their next flight.
“We reached Williamsport early last night and the whole town was out at the airport waiting to greet us, Inouye said. “We were the first team to arrive. After picture-taking was over, we took the boys for dinner and all were in bed by 11 p.m.”
Gifts
Baseball great Ted Williams donated $20 autographed gloves to each player on all eight teams. Arikawa remembers he went down the line, shaking hands with each kid. “He was young, athletic and had a big smile.”
The Hilo team brought vanda orchid lei for players and coaches on the other seven teams. The mayor of Williamsport and the governor of Pennsylvania got them, too.
“The boys were disappointed when the purple lei turned white before they could give them away,” said Bobby Jean Leithead Todd, whose brother, Scott Leithead, was on the team.
“However, the kids on the mainland didn’t know they were supposed to be purple and they were happy to get white orchid leis from Hawaii.”
“The people of Pennsylvania treated us like royalty,” Arikawa says. “Adrian Hussey brought his ukulele and we walked down the street playing and singing. People came out of their homes and hundreds paraded down the street with us.”
Grand slam
Hilo’s first game was Aug. 22, 1961. The team was outfitted with new “Pacific” uniforms, including caps and shoes.
The Hilo Americans played Montreal. The Canadians scored a run in the first inning and two more in the third to lead 3-0.
But in the bottom of the third inning, Hilo loaded the bases. Arikawa, the Hilo catcher, stepped up to the plate. After two pitches, the count was 1-1. The next pitch was a high fastball, Arikawa recalls.
He swung the bat and there was a loud crack. The center fielder could not catch it as it flew over the fence for a grand slam. Arikawa had cleared the bases. It was the first grand slam in Little League World Series history. Hilo led 4-3.
Undaunted, Montreal scored two more runs on Hilo errors in the top of the fourth inning to retake the lead 5-4. But Hilo scored another run in the bottom of the fourth to tie the game 5-5.
Matsumoto, a relief pitcher for Hilo, hit a single in the fifth inning to drive in two runs. Otsuka doubled to bring in one more.
In the top of the sixth and final inning, Montreal could not score and Hilo won 8-5.
It was the first Little League World Series victory in a winners bracket game by a Hawaii team. In 1958 a Pearl Harbor team made Hawaii’s first appearance in Williamsport, but did not win a game. An Oahu team lost its first game in 1959. But in 1960, the Pearl Harbor squad actually won two games, but they both were in the consolation bracket after losing in the first round. The following year, in 1961, Hilo was the first to win its first game there. All the Hawaii teams since then have stood on their shoulders.
Inouye, the manager, said, “The way these boys play and fight together you would think they were blood brothers. They live and breathe baseball.
“We don’t have good pitching. Our fielding is not the best. But we have speed and we don’t know what it is to quit. Behind two runs, three runs, it doesn’t matter. We always come back.”
Semifinals
The win moved the Hilo team to the semifinals against El Cajon, Calif., a suburb of San Diego. El Cajon (pronounced “Ka-hone”) had beaten the returning champion Levittown, Pa., team 1-0 on the first day.
Hilo and El Cajon were scoreless after two innings. Both teams scored one run in the third inning. Hilo had an opportunity to take the lead, but two of its runners were thrown out at home plate.
El Cajon notched a run in the fifth to take a 2-1 lead into what should have been the final inning. But Kinoshita had a single in the top of the sixth to drive in a run, tie the score 2-2 and send the game into extra innings.
In the seventh inning, neither team could score. In the bottom of the eighth inning, El Cajon’s Mike Salvatore stepped up to the plate. The seventh grader stood 5 feet 3 and weighed 108 pounds. He swung the bat and with a crack the ball sailed over the fence for a walk-off home run. Hilo lost 3-2 to place fourth overall.
El Cajon went on to win the Little League World Series over El Campo, Texas, 4-2 on a Salvatore three-run home run in the final inning.
Back home
The Hilo team stopped at Disneyland and Knott’s Berry Farm on the way back from the 1961 tournament. It returned home to Hilo after 10,000 miles to a hero’s welcome.
“Our 10 days away from home was truly a dream come true,” Inouye said. “The boys carried themselves as true gentlemen on and off the field. They were the great representatives of the state of Hawaii.
“In winning, they were a modest group, and in losing, they took it like true Americans. An hour after losing the semifinal game to El Cajon, our boys were swimming in the pool and playing with the other teams as though nothing had happened earlier.”
Arikawa says, “Sixty-one years later, it’s still a dream to me. I can’t believe we went to Williamsport and won a game in the Little League World Series. We’re still the only team from the Big Island to do so.”
Congratulations to all Hawaii Little Leaguers, past and present. You’re not just ballplayers. You’re ambassadors of aloha.
Bob Sigall is the author of the five “Companies We Keep” books, full of amazing stories of Hawaii people, places and organizations.
