Officially, two teams will be crowned the baseball champions of the state of Hawaii next week.
Unofficially, the holder of the Cartwright Cup goes to the survivors of a state of anarchy.
Beginning next Thursday at Hans L’Orange Park, the 65th edition of the Wally Yonamine State Baseball Tournament will begin. The tournaments began before statehood but took two years off during the pandemic. There have been 66 champions crowned, with Baldwin and Maui sharing the title two years ago because there was water falling from the sky.
This isn’t swimming, where schools hit the pool ready to bow down to the Buffanblu. It isn’t football, where neighbor island schools are not invited to compete for the biggest prize. This is baseball, a genteel sport between the lines but chaotic outside of them, with an unseeded group winning as often as the top seed does.
Star power means less than you think it would. Half of our four current Big League Braddahs, Rico Garcia (Saint Louis) of the Orioles and Joey Cantillo (Kailua) of the Guardians, never won a game at states. Legends like Mike Lum of Roosevelt and Shane Victorino of St. Anthony didn’t even get to suit up.
Boston’s Isiah Kiner-Falefa won a state title with Mid-Pacific in 2013, the leadoff man setting up Quintin-John Collier and Marcus Doi with four hits in the first round. I thought he was a masterful shortstop with a nice swing but would be just another guy if he grew up in the Dominican Republic. That’s part of the beauty of it. Scouts can aim their radar guns at Jordan Yamamoto vs. Kodi Medeiros, but even the best prognosticator can only guess at what a teen will grow up to be.
At the highest levels, the best team rarely reveals itself until at least 50 baseball games. But in the prep version it always does. With apologies to Rory Pico’s 2014 Campbell crew and Mark Hirayama’s Mililani squad that same year, George Gusman’s Crusaders were better.
I listen to sports talk radio in the morning, so I just have to make a list. Old timers will hoot and holler about Eric Kadooka’s Punahou dynasty from 2004 to 2010 and Dunn Muramaru’s teams from the early 1990s. Older futs will tell you about a rotation of Derek Tatsuno and Gerald Ako for Aiea, Glenn Oura’s ironman performance for Baldwin and Glenn Goya’s perfect game for Punahou.
Every opinion is valid, but I need numbers. In baseball, all you are trying to do is go home and prevent the other team from touching the plate, which is shaped like a house for a reason. So, the best I can do is measure run differential and divide it by innings played because in ancient times boys were men and played nine innings whereas now we stop after five if someone is being beaten too badly. Oura threw 50 1/3 of Baldwin’s 59 innings in the first two tournaments, but the concept of child abuse didn’t apply to baseball.
What the spreadsheet spit out was that Kadooka’s last champion, the 2010 Punahou Buffanblu, are the most dominant team in state baseball history. They scored 37 runs and gave up only four over 24 innings on Maui despite finishing third in the ILH and suffering five losses and a tie before boarding the plane. So congratulations to Kainoa Crowell, Kaiana Eldredge, Alaka’i Aglipay, sophomore pitcher Zachery Muenster and others, for four days in May you guys were so much better than your peers.
Those Buffanblu beat Mililani 12-0, Pearl City 8-1, Mid-Pacific 4-1 and Baldwin 13-2 for a run differential per inning of 1.38.
Next on the elite list is 1979 Radford (1.30, with the best offense in history at 1.74 runs per inning), 1988 Kamehameha (1.22) and 1975 ‘Iolani tied with 1970 Kalani (1.12). Saint Louis of 2014 is the best team of recent vintage at 1.04. The scrappy team that won with the lowest number was 2024 Baldwin (0.14) with their scheduled opponents, 2024 Maui, at 0.21. Even if the weather did let them play, they might be in the 3,000th inning right now trying to settle it.
Two champions, 1975 ‘Iolani and Farrington in 1963, did not allow a single run in their tournaments.
As you settle into your seat, you might not see a team like Punahou’s 2010 juggernaut, but no matter what happens you will walk away surprised. It’s baseball.