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Life in the Minors Brendan Sagara |
Coaching local players
can make anywhere feel
like homeBeing some 5,000 miles from home during the Frontier League's four-month season, it is always nice to have a little reminder of home whenever possible.
With all of the mental and emotional pressures of the professional baseball environment, it serves me well to have the comfort of being able to keep up with the news of the 50th state online through Web sites, including starbulletin.com and the like.
My trusty iBook laptop enables me to spend countless hours navigating the Internet from the various cities and hotels of the Midwest, attempting to stay abreast of all the goings-on back home in Hawaii. With e-mail and the hours spent on the phone, my friends and family can keep me updated on their lives.
Local food is a blessing as well. Some arare, or some poi or kalua pork or Portuguese sausage sent from my Aunty Elsie Hirayama or Aunty Liane Hiramoto over the past couple of seasons has always made the distance from home a little shorter.
But it has been a very special privilege this season to have two fellow Hawaii boys with me here on the Springfield-Ozark Ducks. With Bryce Uegawachi and fellow former Hawaii-Hilo Vulcan Kaliko Oligo here playing with the Ducks, home just hasn't seemed so far away for me.
Whether we're trading stories about mutual friends or reminiscing about "Rap's Hawaii," or trying to explain to our right fielder and Illinois-native Steve Haake the wonders of poi, Bryce, Kaliko and I always seem able to get a few good laughs in each day.
I first met Kaliko this past year as an assistant coach at UH-Hilo. The ever-excitable Kauaian lives his life in perpetual fast forward. Whether speaking, running, swinging or flying through the gaps of the Frontier League in pursuit of airborne baseballs, Kaliko has never exhibited the ability to sit still. Or sit quietly for that matter.
Only during our first homestand of the season did I realize why UHH coach Joey Estrella started Kaliko in center field for four years. When he's on the bench, he talks and cheers and moves and yells and shouts nonstop. I believe it took his teammates about a week-and-a-half before they could quite understand his rapid-fire pidgin English.
Kaliko has also provided some entertainment in the team's clubhouse. Kaliko's locker neighbors that of third baseman Tanner Townsend. Somehow over the course of the season, the two have gotten rather territorial. Now there is a stripe of athletic tape running from the top of their lockers to the floor, marking each player's space. At the top of the tape, Kaliko wrote "Pacific Ocean," while Tanner scripted "Laurel Lake," about a foot below that.
On one side of the tape, Kaliko wrote "Hawaii" with arrows pointing toward his locker. Further down, Tanner wrote "Kentucky" with a couple of arrows in the direction of his locker.
Although they had a difficult time figuring him out at first, Kaliko quickly earned their respect with his all-out hustle and effort. And now as our starter in center field, Kaliko has come to fit in just fine.
Bryce and I were reunited this season after rooming together last year as members of the Kenosha Mammoths. With Bryce around, it feels like we're in Hawaii Kai, and not Ozark, Mo. As housemates again this season, Bryce and I are able to hang out and keep each other occupied during the many down hours of the baseball lifestyle.
We usually get up in the late morning each day and head off to the gym, or to the stadium for some early conditioning, before heading off to grab some lunch before reporting time. After games is when we really get to just relax and goof around. Whether we're driving off to IHOP joking about ordering the Portuguese sausage, eggs and rice, or in Wal-Mart, laughing about how we should ask the stock girl where the Aloha Shoyu is, or asking for "dakine" at the order microphone at Sonic, we always get a kick out of things.
After dinner, we usually head back to the house and throw in a DVD or watch TV for a few hours, and joke about how we can't find K5 or OC16. Needless to say, there are many instances during the day, at the ballpark or at our host family's place, when we bust out laughing at an inside joke or two.
The running joke around the clubhouse is that Bryce and I won't need to worry about the time difference at the end of the season, cause we're always on "Hawaii time." Heck, it's about 3:30 in the morning as I sit here pecking at my laptop keyboard, as Bryce sits at the other end of the room watching whatever movie is running on Showtime.
Add the year's supply of Tomoe arare and Mochi Crunch cookies and other snacks his parents, Harold and Millie, brought up when they visited a couple of weeks ago, and it feels like we never left home.
Needless to say, having Bryce and Kaliko around has made this year's slow start a little more tolerable for each of us, I'm sure. Like the dozens of other pro ballplayers from the 50th state, we take great pride in representing our home.
A home that seems a whole lot closer this year.
Brendan Sagara, a former University of Hawaii-Hilo pitcher, is in his first season as pitching coach with the Kenosha (Wis.) Mammoths.