 Hawai'i's major leaguers through the years
By Ferd Lewis
Advertiser Staff Writer
Before Lenn Sakata, Sid Fernandez and Benny Agbayani there was Mike Ken-Wai Lum.
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| Mike Lum played 14 seasons in the majors and is probably best known as a batting instructor who tutored, among others, Michael Jordan. |
Before Hawai‘i players could regularly be found on annual big-league rosters, there was Lum to represent the state.
When the dream of playing in the major leagues was just a distant fantasy for a generation of local baseball players, there was Lum to show the way.
Lum wasn’t the first player from Hawai‘i to appear in the major leagues or even the most famous, but in some ways he was one of the most important.
So it is altogether fitting that when the Hawai‘i Sports Hall of Fame enshrines its first group of baseball players in ceremonies tonight at the Stan Sheriff Center, the 55-year-old Lum will be among them.
For it was Lum who, in coming out of Roosevelt High to make the Atlanta Braves in 1967, became the first player from Hawai‘i to reach the majors in the post-World War II era. Until Lum walked away from a football scholarship as a Brigham Young quarterback to take a place in the outfield alongside Hank Aaron, the state hadn’t had a player in the majors since the end of Henry "Prince" Oana’s career in 1945.
In a career that spanned 14 major league seasons before earning him a hitting coach position he still holds, Lum was a point of pride and a source of inspiration for a state that followed his exploits.
He was "Mike Lum from Hawai‘i" even when it took a while for news of games to make it back here. Before cable TV and SportsCenter, there were only newspapers and occasional radio reports.
Even calling home in the first years of his career cost a significant portion of his weekly minor league salary.
But Lum never forgot where he came from or the difficulty of the road traveled, frequently returning to oversee clinics for coaches and players. Just last month he was back again giving instruction and looking for ways to set up more clinics in the future.
Thirty-eight years in baseball as a player and hitting instructor have not dimmed the memories of the daunting path that confronted Lum when he left Hawai‘i for Waycross, Ga., of the Class D Georgia-Florida League in 1963 as a skinny, raw 17-year-old.
"I never thought that I’d never make it (to the majors), but when I saw how big some of the guys I was going up against were, I knew how tough it was going to be," Lum said. "I saw how hard I was going to have to work to make it."
Though magic would become his hobby, it wasn’t sleight of hand that got Lum to the big time or has allowed him to stay in the game. Time spent on the bench as a lifetime .246 role player was invested in learning the intricacies of hitting.
It is knowledge that earns him a paycheck as the Chicago White Sox hitting coordinator, where his tools are both a bat and a laptop. When Frank Thomas and other young high-priced players came through the system, they were sent to Lum for instruction. When Michael Jordan tried to make his way in professional baseball, he was sent to Lum for tutoring.
Lum steps into the Hawai‘i Sports Hall of Fame tonight as a man who bridged two eras in local baseball, helping widen the path for those who would follow.
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