By Ferd Lewis
Advertiser Columnist

On television Sunday, stepping before the crowd in Cooperstown, N.Y., sportscaster Harry Kalas was inducted into baseball's Hall of Fame.

Then, Monday, it was ABC's Al Michaels doing golf's "Battle at Bighorn" as he warmed up for another season of "Monday Night Football."

For back-to-back days, turning on the TV brought back the voices of the past, recalling a who's who flashback of Hawai'i play-by-play sportscasters.

They reminded us of the golden days of play-by-play here when, in a rarely interrupted span of nearly 30 years, Hawai'i sports fans regularly got their hits, runs and errors — as well as touchdowns and slam dunks — live from an upwardly mobile parade of announcers who would become as well known as the players whose exploits they described.

For a market of this size, some remarkable talent has passed through in the years that have seen, beside Kalas and Michaels, a half dozen others go on to big league jobs in baseball, the NBA and NFL. That's not even counting Larry Beil and Neil Everett, who went to non-play-by-play positions at ESPN.

This is in addition to Jim Leahey and Don Robbs, mainstays of the local dial who could have moved on but chose to stay. Leahey, in fact, briefly did Seattle Seahawks games for a time before resuming the University of Hawai'i games, around which he has built his reputation.

So rich was the pipeline that, for a time, there was even a joke around the old Hawaii Islanders of the Pacific Coast League that the baseball team had a better batting average producing major league broadcasting talent than big-league ballplayers.

Before they went on to teams in Houston, Cincinnati, Anaheim or Charlotte the mostly young and upcoming broadcasters polished their craft here on a diet of Islander games, UH events and high school contests. The rickety wooden press box at the Honolulu Stadium and crowded courtside table at the then-Honolulu International (now Blaisdell) Center were launching pads to lucrative careers in the bigs.

Before there was "Do you believe in miracles?" there was the matter of deciphering the nuances of a partner's "third down and a manapua." Before moving on to Monday nights with the Dallas Cowboys and Washington Redskins, there were Friday and Saturday nights spent with Damien and Kalani.

Michaels came here fresh out of Arizona State and, three years later — "The fondest of my pro career," he has said — left to become the youngest play-by-play man in the majors at age 26. Ken Wilson, who followed him, came at age 23 before going on to pro hockey and eventually the Seattle Mariners.

They are the kind of success stories that have become much rarer these days. With a scarcity of pro teams and little turnover in other play-by-play positions, the opportunities to get a foot in the door in sportscasting's most demanding art have become fewer.

If there is to be a link with the past anytime soon, the most likely prospect, people in the industry will tell you, is Kanoa Leahey, who has honed play-by-play talents around his KITV job.

Maybe then the voices of the past will find a resonance into the future.

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