Iron Maehara

By J.G. Floto

We thought it appropriate to take a look at one of the brightest stars in Hawaii's baseball firmament. Ichiro "Iron" Maehara was a great ballplayer in his playing days, was a major league scout, helped organize youth ball in the Islands and became director of Maui County parks.

In 1997, only a year before his death, Maui's beautiful, popular baseball stadium was named for Iron Maehara. When he was a boy growing up on Maui, he loved watching an old-time movie serial called "Iron Claw." Loved it so much and mimicked the hero so well, that the nickname stuck with him for life. In between he led an adventurous, productive baseball life.

During Maehara's youth, virtually every community in the Islands had a company team. Maehara caught on with the HC&S sugar plantation team and soon became famous. Speaker of the State House Joe Souki said, "My most vivid memory of Iron was him playing shortstop for HC&S. I remember watching him in Puunene, Kahului Lahaina and Paia," those locations being communities on Maui. "We used to make the circuit and watch him play every Sunday."

As he matured, his many other baseball talents developed. He was already coaching Island kids and the younger players on HC&S. In the early '40s, however, he was hospitalized with TB. While recovering, he used his hospital time to develop another skill: a weekly column for The Maui News called "Diamond Dopester." After he recovered, he continued feeding baseball info to the regular columnists.

During WWII, despite the fact that Japanese-Americans were closely monitored (it was deemed "impractical", not "immoral", to lock up Hawaii's huge Japanese population as was done on the mainland), Maehara played against military teams. That's how he met Phil Rizzuto.

After the war, he befriended many other barnstorming major leaguers. Exhibition games in Hawaii were common in the '50s and the likes of Don Newcombe, Roy Campanella, Enos Slaughter, Johnny Mize, Preacher Roe, Yogi Berra and Jackie Robinson all played cards and talked baseball deep into the night at the Maehara household.

In the mid-1960s, several Dodgers, including Jim Gilliam and Duke Snider, assisted the Tokyo Orions at their spring camp on Maui. Maehara was also on hand, and so impressed Dodger scout Red Adams with his baseball expertise that Adams suggested Iron become a bird-dog, or free lance, scout for the Dodgers. Over the years, he sent many an Island lad to the mainland, including his biggest find, Sid Fernandez. When the Dodgers signed Fernandez out of high school, they made Maehara a full time scout and he remained on their payroll until 1997, when he retired at the age of 87.

Maehara was also instrumental in organizing Little League ball on Maui and Lanai. As former Maui councilman Goro Hokama recalls, "He was the man who got Little League baseball going in Maui County." Maehara eventually became director of Maui County Parks and from 1971-73 was responsible for developing one of the finest ballparks in Hawaii as part of the War Memorial Complex. In 1997, in honor of a lifetime dedicated to Island baseball, that park was re-named Ichiro "Iron" Maehara Baseball Stadium.

In 1998, just as the major league season was starting, Maehara passed away at 88. The Kahului church where the funeral was held was a standing room only affair, as the entire community turned out to pay their respects. Then Dodgers' General Manager Fred Claire summed up the life of Iron Maehara neatly when he said, "We will miss him greatly. He was a special person as a scout and as a human being. You simply don't replace a man like Iron."