The man who became synonymous with broadcasting baseball and longevity in Hawaii ended up making the islands his home partly because they were between Japan and the continental U.S.
“I’d been there in the Army, and wanted desperately to go back,” Don Robbs said during an interview in 2016. “So I got a job there just in time for the Tokyo Olympics (in 1964).”
Though Robbs returned often to visit, his time living in Japan was brief. After the Olympics and a brief stint at a San Francisco radio station, the former disc jockey at St. Cloud State University from Litchfield, Minn. decided the Hawaii airwaves were the best fit for him. Plus, he loved the people and culture.
Robbs, a Hawaii icon for 50 years and known by sports fans as the radio voice of University of Hawaii baseball for 40 of them, died Thursday morning, three days after his 88th birthday.
Robbs passed peacefully at his Pearl City home after a series of health issues, his son, Scott, said.
Even if you take out what Robbs was most known for — broadcasting UH baseball — his career in Hawaii would still leave an impressive legacy.
But his impact on Rainbows baseball and other UH sports, including calling the first volleyball broadcast, was unprecedented and immense.
This is reflected in a statement from the school’s athletic department Thursday.
“You can’t tell the story of Hawaii Baseball without talking about Don, who brought the program’s greatest moments to life,” the statement read. “Don was more than just a baseball broadcaster, he was a true pioneer who had the vision to bring Rainbow Baseball and Volleyball to the airwaves and helped connect generations of Hawai’i fans with their teams.”
Robbs, who played second base on his high school team, always loved baseball. And his timing was perfect when he asked his at-first-skeptical boss at KHVH if they could try broadcasting UH baseball in the late 1970s. It was the start of the Derek Tatsuno era, and the Rainbows were an emerging national powerhouse under coach Les Murakami.
“I went to (KHVH owner) Bob Berger and said, ‘I think we should broadcast those games.’ Berger gave me a quizzical look and said, ‘We can’t sell it. No one will buy college baseball.’”
Enough sponsors realized the ’Bows were a hot product, and Robbs volunteered to call the games. UH went 0-2 in the 1977 regional, but two years later Tatsuno had become one of college baseball’s all-time greats and won 20 games in 1979, and putting the ’Bows on the radio turned a profit.
That was just the beginning.
The highlight of his baseball broadcasting career came just a few years into it. Robbs called the action from Omaha, Neb., when UH had two chances to win one game and capture the 1980 College World Series.
He and Murakami became lifelong friends, and Robbs mentored ’Bows turned broadcasters, including Howard Dashefsky, a member of the College World Series team who made a career in TV news.
“Put it this way: Robbs is the best,” said Murakami, who retired after a stroke in 2000, but still occasionally attends games. “And conditions didn’t seem to matter to him. I remember road games, like at USF, he did the game from the girls’ dorm. He did games out in the rain. And at BYU out in the snow, didn’t matter to him.”
He did more than 2,000 of them. The last three years were with his son, Scott, who followed his path and has worked in Hawaii sportscasting for more than 25 years.
Don Robbs’ vocation was usually as a radio and TV newscaster or executive, mostly in Hawaii. He called UH baseball his “avocation.”
“I never made a living from baseball, but it’s been a common thread of my life,” said Robbs, on the eve of calling his last game, with his son in 2016.
The press box at Les Murakami Stadium at UH is named after him and Jim Leahey, another Hawaii sportscasting legend who died in 2023.
Robbs was inducted into UH’s Sports Circle of Honor in 2015.
He was the newsman with the hugely popular “Poi Boys” at KPOI early in his Hawaii broadcast career.
During the 1960s and ’70s Robbs did a variety of TV and radio jobs, including news anchor at KHVH-TV (which later became KITV), hosting “Hawaii AM” (which became “The Don Robbs Show”), and following Al Michaels and Ken Wilson as Les Keiter’s No. 2 on Hawaii Islanders radio broadcasts. Keiter taught him how to do his famous road-game recreations, Robbs said.
When he was station manager and news director at KHVH, Robbs hosted and produced the weekly TV “Sports Page” with Star-Bulletin sports editor Jim Hackleman.
He later worked in management at PBS Hawaii and ESPN’s Honolulu radio affiliate, which has long held the radio rights for UH sports.
Robbs also briefly owned a radio station in Oregon.
Early in his career, Robbs did PA duty for the Triple-A Hawaii Islanders. The Islanders’ GM was Lew Matlin, a future Major League Baseball executive and the father of David Matlin, the future UH athletic director. Lew Matlin said he had no doubt Robbs could have had a career as a big-league play-by-play man.
“I don’t think he ever really had his eye on the mainland,” said Tom Moffatt, a legendary entertainment promoter who worked with Robbs during the “Poi Boys” days.
Robbs had such opportunities, but Moffatt was right. Robbs chose to remain in Hawaii.
“He told me he wanted me to grow up here because he thought this was the best place to live,” Scott Robbs said. “He really appreciated the culture and how people care about each other.”
Don Robbs valued his 30-plus years of association with Easter Seals more than any career achievements, acting as emcee for the annual telethon and chairing Taste of Honolulu, raising money for people with disabilities.
“It was the most rewarding,” Robbs said. “Especially helping the kids, and seeing them later as thriving adults.”
Robbs suffered a series of serious health problems that kept him out of the radio booth in August 2013 and hospitalized for 33 days. But he battled back in time to start the 2014 season behind the mic and worked games for three more years at home games, with Scott as his broadcast partner.
“He made it a goal to climb those stairs and get back in the booth,” Scott Robbs said. “It motivated him every day to get better and work.”
The past few years also were challenging health-wise, but Don Robbs continued to attend UH games through last season and he spent time conversing with friends until just a few weeks before his death.
“I could not have written a script for my life any better,” said Robbs, before calling his last UH game. “A small-town boy from Minnesota doing all kinds of things I never thought possible. It’s been fun.”
In addition to Scott, Don Robbs’ survivors include his brother Rick, step-daughter Susan Leong, daughter-in-law Dori and grandchildren Iliahi Robbs, Oliana Robbs, Blake Kondo and Te’a Leong.
Don Robbs donated his body to the John A. Burns School of Medicine. No public memorial service is planned at this time, Scott Robbs said.
