Latest / The One Oʻahu Podcast with Mayor Rick Blangiardi / Korky Gallagher on Makiki’s Cartwright Field being named the oldest active baseball field in America

Transcript

Korky Gallagher on Makiki’s Cartwright Field being named the oldest active baseball field in America · The One Oʻahu Podcast with Mayor Rick Blangiardi

• 0:15
  Welcome to the One Oahu podcast.
• 0:16
  I'm your host, Brandi Higa, and today is Thursday, May 1st, 2025.
• 0:21
  And joining us this week is Corky Gallagher,
• 0:23
  spokesperson for the Friends of Alexander Joy Cartwright.
• 0:27
  Corky, thanks for joining us. Thanks for making some time.
• 0:29
  Oh, this is my pleasure.
• 0:30
  Is good fun.
• 0:31
  And, you know,
• 0:32
  we thought it'd be fitting to get you on because we recently celebrated
• 0:35
  something very special. We'll get to that.
• 0:36
  But tell us a little about yourself.
• 0:38
  Who are you? Corky.
• 0:40
  Well, I'm a kid from Southern California who came over here 53 years ago.
• 0:45
  I thought I was going to Vietnam,
• 0:47
  so I figured I'd surf the North Shore before I went to Vietnam.
• 0:51
  Went to work in the restaurants.
• 0:53
  Immediately. Went to work in the hotels.
• 0:56
  Got to know the Rutledge family.
• 0:57
  Went to work in the unions, became a union business agent.
• 1:00
  Was in charge of all the food and beverage.
• 1:03
  Mr. Rutledge senior didn't like to pay his vacation.
• 1:05
  So he would allow me to be a teamster driver on the movie jobs.
• 1:10
  So that was a good thing for me, because I moved up in that industry
• 1:13
  and I did all that for about 30 years, and then I retired.
• 1:19
  Didn't like retirement.
• 1:21
  Went to work for the Board of Water Supply as an investigator.
• 1:25
  Finished 15 years with them and just retired.
• 1:28
  And then I do art and I do media.
• 1:30
  I do all kinds. Whatever
• 1:32
  anybody needs in the film and television business, whatever I do, I help.
• 1:36
  And so we mentioned you are a spokesperson for the friends of Alexander
• 1:39
  Joy Cartwright.
• 1:40
  First of all, for those who don't know who was Alexander Cartwright.
• 1:43
  Alexander Joy Cartwright was the man who is credited
• 1:48
  with being the father of modern baseball
• 1:51
  by the Major League Baseball Hall of Fame.
• 1:53
  Him and his friends back in New York in the 1840s
• 1:58
  were playing various versions of baseball,
• 2:01
  and they found that whenever they went to begin a baseball game,
• 2:04
  because the rules were so all over the lot, he spent the first two hours
• 2:08
  fighting about the rules before they actually played.
• 2:11
  So they had a meeting in 1846, I think, and he codified the rules.
• 2:16
  He was the only guy who showed up with a pen and pencil.
• 2:19
  He he codified the rules and they became
• 2:22
  the major rules of baseball, which are three strikes.
• 2:26
  You're out nine players to a side.
• 2:28
  You know, the diamond,
• 2:31
  Dimensions and.
• 2:32
  Dimensions and everything.
• 2:34
  And they played on those rules for about two years, two and a half years.
• 2:38
  And he got the itch to go to the gold rush.
• 2:41
  He went across the country with the gold rush.
• 2:45
  He didn't like the gold rush.
• 2:46
  He didn't like panning for gold.
• 2:48
  He got on a boat to come home.
• 2:50
  He got sick on the boat.
• 2:52
  Some people say you got sick on a boat.
• 2:54
  Other people say no, he just didn't like boats.
• 2:57
  He landed over here and he went to work.
• 2:59
  And he did major things for this town.
• 3:02
  And one of the things he did was
• 3:04
  there were a lot of kids playing different versions of baseball.
• 3:07
  Like they had in New York.
• 3:09
  And he got together with the people up at Oahu College.
• 3:12
  At the time.
• 3:13
  They would, you know, put on school, and he got together with all these guys
• 3:17
  and they he was already in very good favor with the monarchy and the royal people.
• 3:23
  And, you know, he started putting ballparks all over the place
• 3:28
  with the fire chief, started the library.
• 3:31
  What I like about him being a former union guys that he made,
• 3:35
  he made the original, library.
• 3:39
  And he commanded that women
• 3:42
  would be allowed to be in the library as well, which I think, you
• 3:45
  know, years ago, equal rights, one 150 hundred years before his time.
• 3:49
  Yeah. Before was woke.
• 3:50
  Yeah. What a guy. You know, what a guy.
• 3:53
  And so how did you get involved with the friends?
• 3:56
  Edgley is a friend of mine. Okay.
• 3:58
  And we were had been working on film documentaries for her.
• 4:03
  I would always help her through unity House and,
• 4:07
  the union movement, help her get money and help her be able to do stuff.
• 4:10
  And we were working on a martial law.
• 4:12
  She wanted to do a documentary on martial law.
• 4:14
  And she said, what do you like?
• 4:16
  I said, I like baseball. She goes, oh, you know about, right?
• 4:19
  I said, no, I know that Doubleday did not create the game of baseball.
• 4:24
  She goes, well, the guy who created the game of baseball is about
• 4:27
  two miles up the road, and he's buried there.
• 4:30
  I said, really?
• 4:31
  And so she told me the story about how he come over here.
• 4:35
  And that was about, I think, February about 25 years ago.
• 4:38
  And then I started reading about him because I'm a voracious reader,
• 4:42
  and I found out his birthday was coming up.
• 4:45
  So I just got in my car.
• 4:46
  I happened to have nothing to do, and I went up to the to the cemetery,
• 4:51
  and there was for borsch and Lou Matlin and Gordon Sakamoto
• 4:55
  and about five other guys, pal Eldridge, Jimmy,
• 5:00
  they were up there and they were up there singing Happy Birthday,
• 5:02
  Alexander Joy can't Cartwright on his birthday.
• 5:05
  And that's where I got to know these guys.
• 5:07
  And to this day, I still remember pal Eldridge
• 5:11
  looking over at me, you know, like, who are you then?
• 5:14
  But then he. Then he's gone.
• 5:15
  I cannot believe that the guy that codified the rules of baseball is
• 5:19
  buried in the China.
• 5:20
  You know, I
• 5:22
  and we both thought that was a big thing.
• 5:24
  And then
• 5:26
  we started talking about the plaque that had been given
• 5:28
  by the Hall of Fame to the Cartwright family that had disappeared.
• 5:32
  And so we said, well, let's make our own.
• 5:35
  We'll make another one.
• 5:36
  So I got involved with these guys and we made it.
• 5:40
  Princess Quanta Nikola paid for it,
• 5:43
  and we you know, our group is a very diverse group,
• 5:47
  you know, I mean, who's who back then, you know, and I didn't even know who
• 5:51
  who anybody was. You know.
• 5:53
  So that's how it got started.
• 5:55
  And I've been with it the group ever since.
• 5:57
  And unfortunately, a lot of our, original people,
• 6:02
  you know, they've passed on now, but, I've always said that
• 6:06
  we're going to follow through with Cartwright as much as we can do
• 6:10
  for the kids in Hawaii.
• 6:11
  And it's always about the kids.
• 6:13
  It's not about anything else.
• 6:14
  It's, you know, we need to have heroes here,
• 6:17
  and you don't have to just be good in one thing.
• 6:20
  You can be good in about 20 things.
• 6:22
  Like, Cartwright was.
• 6:23
  Kind of telling on that his final resting place over there at all was cemetery.
• 6:27
  I know you said that there was kind of that that core group.
• 6:29
  But for those who haven't been there,
• 6:31
  that experience in itself to go there and see, you know, people leave balls.
• 6:35
  And it's a pretty neat experience in itself.
• 6:37
  It's amazing. It's amazing.
• 6:39
  I've been there before.
• 6:40
  Me and Annette Napoleon were there one day and we were talking about Cartwright,
• 6:44
  and this Roberts bus pulls up and the Japanese baseball team
• 6:48
  that was doing their spring training, they all get out of the bus in uniform.
• 6:52
  They lined up in fours on right in front of his gravestone,
• 6:57
  and they bowed to him and was like you say, the
• 7:01
  you know, if you're a young person out there in our community
• 7:04
  and you want to play baseball and you don't have a baseball,
• 7:07
  you go up there because there's baseballs up there,
• 7:09
  all that are left from people all over the world. You know.
• 7:12
  So yeah, it's it's an extraordinary experience.
• 7:17
  I mean, if you're
• 7:19
  the people I've
• 7:19
  taken up there, they left changed, you know, just because of things
• 7:25
  that we know in Hawaii and the what's in the land
• 7:28
  and the spirit of the land and the people and the camaraderie and everything.
• 7:32
  You can't miss it up there.
• 7:34
  Yeah, I went up a few weeks ago
• 7:35
  and actually the Iolani baseball team, you know, turn to you.
• 7:38
  They sign a ball.
• 7:39
  And the coach kind of said, you know, it's important for teams
• 7:42
  and young kids now to kind of know their the origins of this game.
• 7:45
  Why it's important here in Hawaii and to kind of go see it for yourself.
• 7:48
  It's it's a team building experience. Do we believe that.
• 7:51
  And we also believe that we've got Rich Hill now.
• 7:55
  The the field trip that you and I have been approached me at.
• 7:58
  But David knows some real well, and Paul knows and real well.
• 8:01
  We're thinking that
• 8:02
  every time a baseball team comes in plays in Hawaii,
• 8:05
  the bus on the way in or the way out should stop.
• 8:08
  So, you know, they always call car, right?
• 8:12
  The Johnny Appleseed of baseball.
• 8:13
  Well, here's here's how you do it.
• 8:15
  You get these college kids
• 8:16
  who come over here and you run them up, they're there to the grave and,
• 8:19
  you know, and you give a couple of minutes to who he was.
• 8:22
  And, you know, if one out of ten of them Google, Google, the guy,
• 8:27
  you look what you've done, right, you know, so it's a good thing, you know.
• 8:30
  Yeah.
• 8:30
  Well, like I said, we thought it'd be appropriate
• 8:33
  to get you on because we recently recognized,
• 8:35
  the baseball field over there at Cartwright
• 8:37
  Neighborhood Park as the oldest active baseball field in America.
• 8:41
  So you mentioned that, you know, Cartwright kind of came over here
• 8:43
  and the origins of that. But how do we find this out?
• 8:45
  I'm sure there was a lot of vetting
• 8:46
  that went into it, and a lot of people that are ready to challenge us.
• 8:51
  Local people always know, and this is my favorite thing,
• 8:53
  maybe because I'm holy or something, I don't know.
• 8:55
  But one of my favorite things is to prove to people on the mainland
• 8:59
  that we have a different way that we keep track of history.
• 9:01
  In Hawaii. It's oral history.
• 9:04
  Okay, all of this stuff is based on a methodology of teaching kids history.
• 9:09
  All those guys up there, I don't care if it was Powell or Jimmy or everybody.
• 9:13
  We all knew that he had walked off the field in 1852.
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  We knew,
• 9:19
  but we didn't have any.
• 9:21
  We didn't have the proof. Right.
• 9:22
  You didn't tweeted out or so on.
• 9:23
  So when the mayor's office and you folks,
• 9:28
  expressed an interest in this, oh, we shifted into gears.
• 9:32
  I mean, I, you know, we were at battle stations when everybody,
• 9:35
  you know, got books and we all started reading everything we came across,
• 9:40
  this gentleman named Jay Martin,
• 9:42
  and he wrote a book, and he actually defines exactly.
• 9:46
  He spent like, nine months in the state archives, and he's got the bibliography
• 9:50
  behind his book. He's got all the proof and everything.
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  And so
• 9:55
  I call upon a car, right.
• 9:57
  And I, who lives on the mainland.
• 9:59
  And I said, have you ever heard of this guy?
• 10:00
  She goes, I think I got his email.
• 10:02
  I said, oh, okay.
• 10:03
  Well, let's get in touch with him.
• 10:05
  And so I got him on the phone and had a long conversation.
• 10:08
  He was emphatic about it and he puts his name on it.
• 10:12
  That part, right walked off the field with DeWitt in 1852.
• 10:18
  There's been some
• 10:18
  people that have said, well, how could Cartwright's grandson
• 10:22
  remember what he was doing when he was 9 or 10 years old?
• 10:26
  I remember what I was doing when I was 9 or 10 years old.
• 10:29
  And if you grow into that, if the father teaches you how to walk
• 10:33
  off the field and now it becomes everybody's playing at the field,
• 10:37
  you're going to grow into more and more of how you remember that.
• 10:40
  So that's how the oral history from my point of view got started.
• 10:44
  And I contacted Jay,
• 10:47
  and Jay wanted to talk to the mayor,
• 10:50
  and he wanted to talk to Andy, and everybody had no problem.
• 10:53
  There you go.
• 10:54
  And we had done a lot of preliminary, you know, we think so we were pretty sure.
• 11:01
  So but we don't know.
• 11:03
  So and we came to a conclusion that Jay Martin was the authority on this stuff.
• 11:08
  And that's when the mayor, when the mayor or the mayor always had an idea because
• 11:14
  I think what what got him a little bit,
• 11:18
  I don't want to say upset or concerned,
• 11:22
  but you had you had a small town in Massachusetts saying that
• 11:26
  they advertise that they were the oldest baseball active baseball field.
• 11:31
  And they didn't start till 1878.
• 11:33
  Well, by 1878, there were baseball fields all over the place over here, okay?
• 11:37
  And everybody knew that
• 11:41
  Cartwright, when he finished work,
• 11:43
  he would go over and pick up his kids over it, like like anybody does today.
• 11:48
  You would go over to the school, and he he he liked to walk.
• 11:51
  So he would walk over from downtown area and he would go pick up his kid.
• 11:55
  And he was already working with Queen Emma.
• 11:58
  So he knew about the availability of the Makiki Reserve.
• 12:02
  And so they walked it off.
• 12:03
  And from that day forward it was up and running.
• 12:07
  How long did this take you to prove?
• 12:13
  I'm retired now, so I don't look.
• 12:15
  I don't look at clocks very often, but I would say that
• 12:20
  from probably January
• 12:22
  when I first met Andy, when we were going full speed ahead
• 12:27
  and I was, I personally was going down to the state archives.
• 12:31
  And people in Hawaii are so cool.
• 12:34
  There's so cool.
• 12:36
  You go to the library and you go downstairs
• 12:38
  and a lady ask you what you what are you interested in?
• 12:42
  You say, Cartwright, and hold it.
• 12:45
  Oh, you mean the baseball guy?
• 12:47
  But remember, remember, next thing you know,
• 12:48
  she bringing out all this stuff and people bringing out stuff.
• 12:52
  One of the things that Jay Martin said was that he spent nine months
• 12:56
  in the state archives, and he didn't just read documents.
• 13:00
  He read letters that went back and forth between Cartwright and his wife, who's
• 13:04
  still in New York, and his Knickerbocker baseball player friends and everything.
• 13:10
  So if the guy had written 22 books, he's like an a, you know, a scholar,
• 13:15
  and he says, hey, anything the people of Honolulu need, we got that you, you know.
• 13:21
  So I would say for me personally, it was a full time thing,
• 13:25
  you know, not counting times when the surf came up, I would say
• 13:28
  probably a full time thing for about 3 or 4 months.
• 13:31
  You know.
• 13:32
  Yeah. That's impressive.
• 13:33
  You know, you mentioned Massachusetts. Yeah.
• 13:35
  What kind of pushback do you expect in the months to come?
• 13:39
  The best kind possible.
• 13:40
  The best kind possible.
• 13:41
  You know, my my training with the unions has always taught me
• 13:46
  that when people push back, that's debate.
• 13:49
  And debate is good. Okay.
• 13:52
  So you better prepare for the debate.
• 13:54
  You know, healthy debate is good.
• 13:55
  So what comes next?
• 13:57
  We do we go to Guinness to try to to prove this or what comes next.
• 14:01
  Well, the park needs to be a playable park.
• 14:06
  Okay.
• 14:07
  It's there, people play there.
• 14:09
  But it's been elevated now
• 14:12
  to a state his, you know, to a historical property.
• 14:15
  So we want to make sure the kids can slide at second base and third base.
• 14:20
  And we want to make sure that the ground is proper.
• 14:23
  So we're going to do this thing incrementally.
• 14:27
  And what I really like is,
• 14:30
  when I work with the unions, I get to know everybody in this town.
• 14:33
  And I knew Frank Fossey real well.
• 14:35
  And I can't tell you how much Rick Blangiardi reminds me of my boss.
• 14:40
  He really, really does.
• 14:41
  Because when he's into it, he.
• 14:44
  You can't. You can't stop. Him. That's long enough. Yeah.
• 14:47
  You can't stop it.
• 14:48
  So I think that what what, Rick is going to be doing is before
• 14:53
  he decided to declare it the way he did, he went, okay, am I up for this?
• 14:58
  Yeah, I'm up for this.
• 14:59
  So I think we we want national debate.
• 15:03
  We want all this stuff to happen.
• 15:05
  And, from my point of view, I take the position.
• 15:09
  Everybody's opinion is valid.
• 15:11
  These people in New York who say, well, I had a brother that was, you know, there
• 15:15
  when they started the game.
• 15:16
  And that's valid.
• 15:17
  It's all valid. But we don't
• 15:22
  care so much about that.
• 15:23
  We care about the guy when he landed here in 1849,
• 15:27
  we care about how he contributed to our community
• 15:30
  and to our kids and everything, and nobody's going to get us off that.
• 15:33
  And if anybody would push back at us and try to say
• 15:37
  that he that he didn't do it, would you get a video?
• 15:41
  What do you mean?
• 15:43
  I mean, you have a video that he was there or he wasn't here.
• 15:46
  Yeah. It doesn't exist.
• 15:48
  So we rely upon our oral history and,
• 15:52
  and our, documentation from Jay Martin.
• 15:55
  Primarily as well as others.
• 15:58
  Yeah. No, Corky, you're absolutely right.
• 15:59
  You know, I think back to that ceremony and Mario was really fired up
• 16:03
  when we were there at, Cartwright Field and for those maybe who weren't there,
• 16:09
  how historic was this moment?
• 16:10
  You know, if you could just explain the permanent signage now installed,
• 16:14
  what was that like?
• 16:15
  And then what was it like for you?
• 16:17
  The three people that started the Friends of Alexander Joy Carr, right,
• 16:20
  were well-known media people and baseball executives in Hawaii.
• 16:26
  And our mission was always to grow
• 16:30
  the diameter of of what we knew.
• 16:33
  And what we knew was that Cartwright was the guy in Hawaii.
• 16:37
  They brought baseball here.
• 16:38
  And anything that we could do to that end, we were going to do,
• 16:44
  the first thing we did is we made a plaque up at the grave.
• 16:47
  The second thing is we made a trophy that's over.
• 16:50
  At First Hawaiian Bank.
• 16:52
  And Lou Matlin, David's father.
• 16:55
  You have to know, Lou Lou's
• 16:58
  one of these guys where as soon as he finished doing the trophy,
• 17:01
  and as soon as the ceremony was over, his thing was what's next?
• 17:06
  Which is my kind of people. And
• 17:09
  so in terms of the significance of it,
• 17:13
  that moment that the mayor did at Cartwright Field,
• 17:17
  it's extremely emotional to all of us.
• 17:20
  We've been on this thing for 25 years.
• 17:24
  You want to know somebody who really emotionally was,
• 17:27
  was, was touched by this, was on a car, right on a car.
• 17:30
  Right. Family had had endured.
• 17:32
  I'll imagine being number one.
• 17:36
  Her great great granddaddy was not recognized.
• 17:39
  And then when the Hall of Fame made a mistake and her grandfather
• 17:43
  caught him and they put him in the put Alexander Cartwright in the second class,
• 17:49
  that that healed some wounds.
• 17:52
  But you want to talk about a happy person.
• 17:55
  She's back in LA and all of her friends and everybody are flipping out, and she's
• 17:58
  going to go to Dodger Stadium.
• 18:00
  She's going to do all this kind of stuff,
• 18:01
  and she wants to move back to Hawaii now, because it is an emotional thing,
• 18:06
  and it's rightfully emotional because it's like a legacy stuff.
• 18:11
  And it's for everybody.
• 18:13
  In Hawaii we talked about, you know, the kids going up to the grave site.
• 18:18
  This is stuff you remember the rest of your life, you know, and the
• 18:22
  we have our heroes over here and our guys are just as good,
• 18:25
  if not better than a lot of their guys up there, you know, you know, and
• 18:29
  so and for me personally,
• 18:32
  I'm 71 now, you know, I'm,
• 18:35
  I owe this place everything, you know.
• 18:37
  So it was a really, really good thing for me.
• 18:40
  You know, I get a little touched when I, when I think about it,
• 18:43
  because these guys all took me under their wing,
• 18:47
  you know, David's father and Firdaus and and, you know, our Rutledge.
• 18:52
  And I feel that that Rick Blangiardi
• 18:55
  is so much like Mayor Fozzie, that boy.
• 18:59
  You guys that work for him.
• 19:00
  Boy, are you getting a lesson.
• 19:02
  And you know I've got a future, you know, because he's one of these kind of people
• 19:06
  that, you know, it's one thing to operationally know how to do stuff,
• 19:12
  but it's another thing to be driven by the heart.
• 19:16
  And he's driven by the heart.
• 19:18
  So the people of Hawaii and the people in particular in Honolulu,
• 19:21
  are very lucky to have this guy as their mayor.
• 19:24
  You know.
• 19:26
  Corky, if Alexander Cartwright
• 19:28
  could have been there, what do you think he would have said?
• 19:31
  He would have been the umpire.
• 19:33
  Okay.
• 19:34
  He would have said, what are we doing in a ceremony like this?
• 19:37
  Let's play ball.
• 19:38
  He would have been the umpire.
• 19:40
  As a matter of fact, the one of the one of the good proofs
• 19:45
  that he codified a lot of the rules was the very first game that they played.
• 19:50
  He didn't play.
• 19:51
  He was the umpire.
• 19:53
  Okay. And he find a guy for swearing.
• 19:55
  So that's where everything got started between umpires and baseball players.
• 19:58
  So if you ask me what he what would he do if he was at Cartwright Field last week?
• 20:04
  What are we doing? Let's play ball. Come on.
• 20:09
  You mentioned he was also a civic partner here on Oahu.
• 20:12
  Can you talk about the lasting mark that he made beyond the baseball field?
• 20:18
  Well, the fire department is huge.
• 20:20
  The fire department is huge.
• 20:21
  Many things with him are huge.
• 20:23
  A lot of people,
• 20:26
  they wonder about land issues, you know, Hawaiian land issues.
• 20:30
  And they should know we should be giving all of our support on people
• 20:35
  so that they get whatever reparations and land and everything that they can.
• 20:39
  I think it says something very, very strongly
• 20:42
  that the monarchy, the Queen, Emma, the color collar
• 20:46
  and the Kamehameha the Third trusted this guy so much
• 20:50
  from a very early time, he maybe was only here three or 4 or 5 years.
• 20:55
  They put him in charge of all of their affairs.
• 20:58
  He sued the Board of Water Supply on behalf of,
• 21:03
  of Queen Emma's foundation
• 21:05
  because he caught the Board of Water Supply cheating or doing something wrong,
• 21:09
  and he got $8,000 in reparations
• 21:12
  for that at that time, back in the 1850s,
• 21:15
  he had the same guy that did that.
• 21:19
  Poor lady couldn't pay your rent on one of Queen Emma's properties.
• 21:23
  He always made sure that he went over to see her and see how she was doing and,
• 21:26
  you know, and made arrangements.
• 21:28
  So he was he was so what we would want this guy to be, you know.
• 21:34
  Did you play baseball growing up?
• 21:36
  Oh, yeah.
• 21:37
  What position did you play hockey?
• 21:38
  Badly. Oh.
• 21:42
  I could hit.
• 21:43
  I can still hit.
• 21:44
  As a matter of fact, I was at a union softball game
• 21:47
  at Cartwright Field about 15 years ago.
• 21:51
  And in between the game, I asked my friend to go out on the mound.
• 21:54
  I said because he had a softball, I said, don't throw it to me overhand.
• 21:58
  I said I meant time, timing, no good with this softball pitching.
• 22:02
  So he throws it to me overhand. The first pitch.
• 22:04
  I miss the second pitch.
• 22:06
  I fell through pitch, I fell.
• 22:08
  He's getting ready to walk off the mound.
• 22:09
  I said, give me one more pitch. Come on, come on, Tommy.
• 22:12
  He gives me the pitch and I hit.
• 22:14
  There's kind of a double fence in straightaway center.
• 22:17
  I hit the top of the double fence.
• 22:19
  It went into the street
• 22:21
  and it almost broke the window at the barbershop that's over there.
• 22:25
  And you should have seen all these guys that were on the field.
• 22:28
  They were all stevedores and teamsters, and everybody ran like they were 12 years
• 22:32
  old, like they broke the window. It was great.
• 22:34
  It was great.
• 22:35
  So yeah, but I could, I could hit so they would put me in right field.
• 22:40
  Yeah. Okay. You know, because I couldn't,
• 22:43
  I could never
• 22:43
  play like, infield because that my eyes is weird.
• 22:47
  I'm an artist, but my eyes aren't that good.
• 22:50
  And you mentioned.
• 22:51
  Well, I guess you didn't mention on this podcast,
• 22:53
  but I don't think it's any secret to anyone that you're a huge Dodgers fan.
• 22:56
  What is the genesis of that?
• 23:00
  Like like a lot of people
• 23:01
  like Dan Cook, like Dave Shoji,
• 23:05
  myself, we were little kids
• 23:07
  in Southern California when the Dodgers came to LA.
• 23:10
  The games began at 8:00 at night.
• 23:13
  And so you know, you're five, six, eight, nine years old, you're in bed.
• 23:17
  Except we were in bed with our transistor radios
• 23:20
  underneath our pillows and listening to Vin Scully.
• 23:23
  And so I'm a big yeah, I'm a big, big Dodger fan.
• 23:27
  Always have been, always will be.
• 23:29
  Love show he love what he's doing for the game.
• 23:32
  I love what the Dodgers are doing.
• 23:34
  But in fairness to Duane Caruso, when I say this, out of due respect
• 23:40
  for Don Roberts, who recently passed away, who you say give me a lot of crap, okay?
• 23:44
  These guys are all you guys in Hawaii.
• 23:46
  You guys are decidedly Giants.
• 23:48
  People over here, you know, Pamela Young, everybody gives me, you know, guff.
• 23:53
  But nobody gave it to me more than than than, pal and Jimmy on television.
• 23:58
  They would be calling a game and the Dodgers would come up
• 24:01
  and they start mentioning my name.
• 24:03
  I go to work the next day.
• 24:04
  Oh, I'm having trouble all over the place.
• 24:06
  And you're a good fun. No, you know, good fun.
• 24:10
  Well, Corky, thank you so much for your time.
• 24:11
  Is there anything that we missed
• 24:14
  tomorrow?
• 24:16
  We've missed tomorrow.
• 24:17
  You know we're not there yet. Okay?
• 24:20
  We want to keep the energy of this thing going.
• 24:22
  I am totally confident in the mayor
• 24:26
  that this is
• 24:27
  going to be one of those things that he's going to be on to all the time,
• 24:30
  and I would invite the public that any time they see something,
• 24:34
  see an advancement or they have a have an idea as far as car,
• 24:39
  right field, because let's face it, car right fields in a portion of Honolulu.
• 24:42
  Now that that that needs some improvement that that get involved.
• 24:47
  Okay.
• 24:47
  We're we're not making any statements
• 24:51
  against anybody or anything like, like Ford
• 24:56
  and Lou Matlin said in the very beginning, we're we're not in the lead.
• 24:59
  This organization,
• 25:00
  the Friends of Carburetor, just a bunch of guys that get together
• 25:03
  and love baseball.
• 25:04
  And the the way we learned to love baseball was to go to sleep
• 25:07
  with a transistor radio under our pillow.
• 25:11
  And and so parents are having the hardest time with their kids now. So
• 25:17
  we want them to know that
• 25:19
  they can drop their kids off in car, right field, and they're going to be safe.
• 25:22
  And, you know,
• 25:25
  get involved.
• 25:26
  That's the only way we can do stuff.
• 25:28
  Well, said Corky, thanks again. Pleasure.
• 25:31
  And a quick reminder.
• 25:32
  Mayor Blangiardi is next.
• 25:33
  Town hall meeting is tonight, May 1st, at Kahuku High School at 7 p.m..
• 25:36
  That's for residents in Kahuku. Hello, light year.
• 25:39
  We hope to see you there. Mahalo for listening.
• 25:41
  And until next time, Aloha.