Press Box
He could go into a potential recruit's home and subtly flash a World Series ring. The kid's father could confirm, telling the son, "Yeah, he's for real. He got three hits off me in the state tournament." World Series winner
not good enough for UHIt's called instant credibility.
But Lenn Sakata didn't make the cut with the University of Hawaii.
After all this time, we only really know who the new UH baseball coach won't be: The candidate many around town feel is most qualified for the job -- a local guy who made it to the major leagues on grit and has coached in the pros the past 10 years, a recent inductee to the Hawaii Sports Hall of Fame.
UH athletic director Hugh Yoshida says Sakata isn't among the finalists for the job because of his lack of a four-year college degree. "And he has no college coaching experience," Yoshida adds.
So technically, Sakata is underqualified, and theoretically, he's overqualified.
"I was a little disappointed I wasn't asked to interview," he says. "It still bothers me. I really wanted to give it a shot, for the sake of recruiting local players."
Sakata speaks from spring training at Scottsdale, Ariz. He is a minor-league manager with the San Jose Giants. There has been speculation that Sakata is in line for a coaching job with the big club in San Francisco, and that he backed off on pursuing the UH position for that reason.
Not true, Sakata says. And if he's on the fast track with the Giants, nobody has told him.
IT WOULD MAKE SENSE, what with major league baseball's recent emphasis on minority hiring. But Sakata has said the Giants like him at the level he is at now because one of his strengths is developing young talent.
"When I worked with kids on Sundays (over the winter), I found there's a lot more talent in Hawaii than I was aware of," Sakata said. "That's the part I'm a little depressed about."
Sakata has enough experience and perspective to realize worse things happen every day. If he needed any reminding, he got it when Jerome Williams' mother, Deborah, passed away March 17 at 46 -- the same age as Sakata. He helped arrange for Williams, considered by many to be the Giants' top prospect, to return home to Waipahu for her services last week.
Sakata's empathy for Williams extends beyond them both being from Hawaii. In 1977, Sakata's father, Melvin, died while Lenn was at spring training trying to earn a job in the majors.
"It's a tough thing to deal with," Sakata says. "My dad was 52. I talked to him a couple days before he died. He got upset because he felt the manager wasn't giving me a fair shake. It kind of haunts me. I felt guilty, like I caused his heart attack.
"It kind of made me wake up and realize that I had to do things for myself. It kind of told me that I needed to be as serious as I could about what I was doing, because our time is limited."
Sakata ended up making his major league debut later that season. His father didn't get to see him play in The Show, but he had made it.
Success always comes with a little disappointment. The older you get, the more you realize the bumps in the road are merely that. That's how Sakata deals with the rejection from UH.
"It's not meant to be, and I'll get over it," he says. "Maybe it wasn't the dream that I was dreaming about."
Dave Reardon, who covered sports in Hawaii from 1977 to 1998,
moved to the the Gainesville Sun, then returned to
the Star-Bulletin in Jan. 2000.
E-mail Dave: dreardon@starbulletin.com