Caring coach
Tamayose, 87, remembered
Joe Apolo remembers his old friend and foe Ross Tamayose quite well. Apolo is just one of many in the Maui baseball community who will miss Tamayose and his stern, but reassuring demeanor.
Tamayose, a Haliimaile resident, died on March 1 at Kula Hospital. He was 87.
Apolo coached the KTA Red Sox and Tamayose coached the Up Country Athletic Association team in the Maui Pony League in the heyday of the organization that launched the overwhelming success in youth baseball that the Valley Isle now enjoys.
The battles were epic, and Apolo recalls Tamayose getting the best out of his teams in Pony league and All-Star play.
Tamayose also coached Pop Warner football for the Makawao Cowboys and worked for several years for the Maui County Parks and Recreation Department.
“When I first started off as a young guy … he was always good to me,” Apolo said. “He used to tell me things like, ‘You may have heard, but you are going to find out what the league is all about. On how the people are going to act and you are not going to be happy all the time.’ And all that kind of stuff.”
There were fierce rivalries all over the place in the Maui Pony League back when the youth baseball path on the Valley Isle included only Little League T-Ball and majors for players up to 12 years old run by the Maui Kiwanis, then the Pony League for 13- and 14-yearolds followed by Colt (15-16).
A team from Kahului won the 1980 Pony League World Series in Davenport, Iowa.
Of course, high school baseball was big in the 1980s as well — Maui High School won the state crown in 1982 and Baldwin took the state title in 1984 — but Tamayose was steadfast in his dedication to the Upcountry kids.
“He was a good role model to his kids,” said Apolo, who still helps run the Maui Football Officials Association and is a major part of Maui Pop Warner football.
Tamayose clearly had a kind spot in his heart for the Upcountry community and the kids who came from it, but he worked hard to make good baseball players and better citizens.
“There was discipline in his team,” Apolo said. “At times when we came to play after the game, we always would chat, talk about how we played, what they did, both sides.”
Tamayose took a Maui B team to the Pony League Asian-Pacific regional in Japan after an upset title in the state tournament in the late 1980s.
“He was an underdog when he won the state title,” Apolo said. “He beat Wailuku and I think Wailuku was the team to beat, you know, but Tamayose, he was kind of smart. So, he knew he couldn’t beat them by hitting, but he knew bunting. He beat Wailuku by the bunting game — bunting and pitching and defense.”
Jon Viela — a former standout for Wailuku, a state champion as a player for Baldwin, and a Most Valuable Player for the University of Hawaii — remembers Tamayose going out of his way to help Viela learn on the mound.
“He was a family friend because he worked for Maui (County) Parks and Recreation and my dad was a lifeguard,” said Viela, who coached Baldwin to the state title in 2016 and is now the athletic director at Kamehameha Maui. “They became good friends and my dad knew that he was a (baseball) coach. My dad arranged for me to go and get some pitching lessons from him roughly around my 12, 13, 14 age.
“He taught me a lot. He taught me a curveball and it was very unorthodox, it was like a knuckle-curve that he got me to throw and the thing was unbelievable. That changed how I pitched, that gave me one more weapon to use.”
It’s not the physical part of the game that Viela remembers most about Tamayose — it is the selflessness that Tamayose unveiled.
“I think that year we won the Pony League season and I ended up being the MVP and pitched in all the big games, so I attribute that to him because he took a lot of time out of his day — it was after school and after hours for him,” Viela said. “He sacrificed a lot — that’s what I remember, and we played against him. He coached me, he helped me. I played for Wailuku and he coached for Upcountry Pony.
“He didn’t mind — that’s the man he was. He wanted to help kids, that was his bottom line. He did it his way.”
Viela clearly learned some of his coaching acumen from Tamayose.
“At the time, you remember a lot of those coaches weren’t the loving type,” Viela said. “All of those guys, they were the hard type. The way they coached was how they loved you. He was a part of that, but he showed a little bit more affection.”
Allan Karimoto sent a letter to The Maui News remembering Tamayose, his friend, former teammate and coach.
“KTA had Leonard Barcoma and Joe Apolo, Lihikai had Issac Toyama and Dennis Yoshida, Wailuku had Jeremy Kozuki, Clarence (“Clown”) DeCambra, Moody Kahoohalahala and Up Country had Ross Tamayose,” Karimoto wrote. “Ross loved coaching. I played with him on the Makawao Sr. league team. He was the hardest worker and very competitive, but he was at his best when he was helping baseball or football players.”
Karimoto added that he will never forget Tamayose.
“For me this was Ross Tamayose, quiet, stern, softhearted person wanting to open the doors for the up country youth, the world of competition,” Karimoto wrote. “Helping the Up Country youths by developing their skills and talent to adapt to today’s world.”
Current Baldwin head coach Craig Okita played on a summer Pony all-star team for Tamayose when Okita was 13. Okita played for Baldwin and UH Hilo, and then coached the Central East Maui Senior League All-Stars to the world championship last summer.
“I remember playing for him and the one thing that stands out in my mind is I show up and we’re practicing and he tells me, ‘Oh, who are you?’ ” Okita said with a loud laugh. “That’s always stuck in my mind. Here I am thinking I’m an all-star player and then I show up and the coach doesn’t even know who I am, so that was classic.”
Okita blossomed past the B team that Tamayose coached that summer, but his short stint with Tamayose stuck with him.
“He was straightforward, a little intimidating in the beginning, but once you got to know him it was all about going out there and having fun,” Okita said. “That’s my short impression of him.”
Tamayose was inducted into the Maui High School Hall of Honor in 2018. One of his best players for the Upcountry team was Derek Akiona, who won a Maui Pony League batting title under Tamayose before starring at Maui High, where he graduated from in 1991.
“Back in the day, he liked having the ball as a player when he used to play,” Akiona remembered. “He always kept telling us that ‘you should have the ball. You should find a position where you have the opportunity to get the ball.’ So him as a player — back when I don’t know when that was — he was a catcher.
“He wanted to have control, he wanted to have the opportunity to make plays, especially at crucial times. As a player I always remembered that.”
Akiona can still picture Tamayose walking into practice wearing jeans, an Upcountry logo shirt and a black letterman-type jacket that had “UPCOUNTRY” strewn across the back. Longtime assistant coach Willy Barut was always there, too.
“He was pretty laid-back, he always gave us opportunities to make decisions for ourselves,” Akiona said of Tamayose. “Back in the day, you went to Bobby Medeiros (for Little League), and then you went to Ross Tamayose, and then you went to Maui High School. (Tamayose) never yelled at anybody. When he got upset — it was funny — he just gave us a look. And that was it. He’d shake his head. He had that look.”
Akiona said that times have changed since the days of the battles in the Maui Pony League that saw Tamayose’s teams hold their own against the Central Maui powers.
“Those kind of guys are hard to find these days,” Akiona said. “They put their heart and soul into it.”
Floyd Miyazono joined his brother Francis Miyazono as a coach for the Lihikai Surfers in the Maui Pony League.
“I remember him as a very competitive coach, a very compassionate individual,” Floyd Miyazono said of Tamayose. “I did have my son (Royce) that played for him one year and he really enjoyed playing baseball under him. … He could do some magic with the players. He would hardly raise his voice, but whenever he spoke he really was very clear in what his objectives were.
“He was a very fine man, very fair, very compassionate. I remember him for having those qualities. He really cared about the kids and he always talked about the importance, not of being a ballplayer, but of being more so as a person, being a positive contributor to the community.”