A young child with a mysterious blood disease. A widening gyre that mobilizes people from Hilo to Japan into a support team. A most unusual subplot involving the stock market and country music. Stay tuned to this true story as told in real time in these pages—because even we don’t know where it’s headed.

Orchestrated and conducted by Mark Panek. To read previous chapters, click here.

Chapter 7 – Let’s Play Ball… With Death

I was just diagnosed sick and I was worried about baseball.

I wanted to play but understood that it could mean the death of me.

I thought that I should play baseball because I would rather die than have to be the boy in the bubble.

My dad went up to my coach and he broke down. He just explained what was going on and was just asking if he should take me off the team or if I could just stay on the bench and watch. It was all taken into consideration and after all was said and done it was agreed that I would at least go to practice and sit on the bench.

Action was taken as soon as the news spread. There was a meeting set up and suddenly Facebook walls were covered with pictures of people who had gotten swabbed for “Be the Match.”

Everyone was banding together. For me? I never would have thought that so many people cared so much for me. I don’t talk to many people even today. I maybe talk regularly to three people at school, as in holding an actual conversation instead of just a “Hi” or a hand shake. But it felt as if the whole island had come together for me. Everyone was praying, sending their hope, becoming bone marrow donors. People I barely knew where all hoping me a speedy recovery.

But my baseball team was the most important of all of them.

Seven years ago when I was just starting baseball my old team disbanded. My dad spent months looking for a team for me. But every one of them said they were full. All but one. Keaukaha. They said “Yeah, we’re full. But Kenny’s welcome to come to practice until next season when we get more openings.” It was enough.  

I went the next week and I sucked. I would drop the ball all the time and miss every pitch but not a word was said. Nobody said, “You’re not actually on our team.” Or anything like that.

Then the next year came. I finally was actually going to be in games. I was going to play with my teammates, the ones I had been playing with for months. At this point I was on the team. I knew everyone and they all knew me. I fit in.  

My coach at the time was Coach Fats. He’s short and he’s wide as the name implies. He has a mustache and wears glasses and said since my nickname was Kenny he would remember me by calling me Kenny Rogers. What that meant was whenever I messed up from across the field he would sing “You picked a fine time to leave me Lucille.”

The next season came and I would move up a league. I would play up with a bunch of kids who were one to two years older than me, but also with my friends Hiapo and Miles. We were the only young ones on the team. But I never once felt out of place—even with being one of the worst kids on the team.

I would play many seasons with Keaukaha with only one or two kids changing every year. I was never the best but I got better. When I had been playing for Keaukaha for about 4 years, I got the news: I had a blood disease.

It was devastating. I thought that I would never be able to play baseball again in my life. One wild pitch, one tap in the head with a baseball and my short life was over. If I missed one poorly in the outfield and it hit my face I was gone in 50 minutes. Already, one roundball to the leg and in hours a giant bruise four times the size of the baseball that hit me would just appear. If I made a diving catch one whole side of my body would be purple; if I got a big enough cut then I would bleed out easily.

 I remember getting hit in the leg by a bad bounce that I didn’t get my hands on in the last 10 minutes of the game and when I got home and took my pants off and put on my shorts there was a bruise that looked like I had been hit with the force of a bullet. I would get a nick from hitting my knee on a rock and it looked like a gunshot wound. Any small thing that happened looked like a military injury. I had these things for about 6 months before getting diagnosed but it got worse and worse. I’m lucky that it was off season when I was first sick and never got hurt before taking safety precautions. I’m lucky to not have been hit by a pitch.

Baseball is not the ideal thing to do if I wanted to stay alive but it was the best thing to do if I wanted to live.

When we went to practice I saw a look of genuine concern cross over the face of one of my coaches. It was the first time that I had ever seen him like that. He would always be the one who joked and laughed the most.

Action was taken immediately with a meeting being set up and plans being made for a bone marrow donor signup drive.

I went to all of the meetings. And I cried every time. I was sad and thought I was going to die but I was also happy that people who didn’t know I existed three years ago would show so much concern for me, like family. It was always said—that we are all family—but it was demonstrated at a whole new level at that point in time.

I still wanted to live a life. In meetings it was decided that I would wear a helmet in the outfield at all times and I wouldn’t hit or run the bases. This was fine with me. I was just happy to be on the field.

I played the whole season. It was around 25 games and not once did I get really hurt. I played with caution and I think that going through what I went through with my team is what keeps me still playing today. I can’t leave baseball now because it is such a critical part of me becoming better.

The effort everyone put into making sure that I could play baseball is something that I feel no other team would ever have done for me. If it were any other team they probably would have not wanted to put in the effort to make sure that I still played baseball. I would no longer be playing if it wasn’t for Keaukaha and the help that they gave me—and I for that I am so grateful.

To Be Continued

Kensuke Panek is a writer living in Hilo.

Father of Kensuke, husband of Noriko, Mark Panek has been living in and writing about these islands for three decades—two of those as a professor of creative writing at the University of Hawai‘i. His writing has been recognized with awards from Bamboo Ridge and the Hawai‘i Book Publisher’s Association. A 2013 winner of the Elliot Cades Award, Panek was also honored with two titles on Honolulu Magazine’s juried list of 50 Essential Hawai‘i Books: Hawai‘i and Big Happiness: The Life and Death of a Modern Hawaiian Warrior. He’s also the author of Gaijin Yokozuna: The Life of Chad Rowan.

Raised by legendary Parker Ranch Rough Rider Gordon Kalaniopio, first-time author Shane Kalaniopio spent a decade building homes for Waimea’s Quality Builders before taking a Hawai‘i County carpentry position in closer proximity to the 80-acre Kulani ranch he and his wife Pua are building to pass family traditions down to their son Kahiau and daughter Lihau. The couple has been recognized by the Puna Soil and Water District as the Outstanding Cooperator of 2018.

Serial entrepreneur and first-time author Dave Gagne moved from Boston to Los Angeles to Paris, France before settling in Puna with his wife Niko fifteen years ago. Father of Noah and Mia, Dave owns and operates Pine Coast Pool Service, and recently founded an investment company with his brother Bill.

The Professor, The Pool Guy, and The Paniolo will feature and alternate contributions from Panek, Gagne, Kalaniopio, and possibly others. This serial real-time true-life novel was conceived by and is orchestrated and conducted by Mark Panek.

Image by Eduardo Balderas.