Fred Kuhaulua Turned Away from the Snellen
He could see the diamond fine from his back yard
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1982 Topps Padres Future Stars (#731) - Card of the Day
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The first two guys on the 1982 Topps Padres Future Stars card above look like they sort of belong together.
I mean, first you have Mike Armstrong and his Dr. David Tavel specs, which he only had to have because he failed an eye test somewhere along the way. He couldn’t read the eyechart.
Next to him is catcher Doug Gwosdz whose nickname is Eyechart thanks to his uncommon (in baseball, at least) last name.
They’re a matched pair of potential battery mates, born from San Diego optometrists’ dreams.
(And for the record, Armstrong always seemed to be up to something shady on our baseball cards. Case in point.)
Fred Kuhaulua, on the other hand, can’t bear to even face his too-cute teammates. Or maybe he’s just looking out over the sea, to his past and future.
See, Kuhaulua was born in Hawaii in 1953, and he died there in 2021. In between, though, he had some continental diamond business to take care of.
Kuhaulua’s journey to the majors began in 1972, when the Giants signed him to a minor league deal out of high school. Three seasons on San Francisco’s farm left him at Single-A Fresno, going nowhere fast.
That offseason, though, the California Angels sniffed him out as a potential future member of their staff and drafted him away from the Giants.
The move up the coast (organizationally, at least) jump-started Kuhaulua, and he began clicking off the rungs of the Angels’ system. By 1977, he was with the Triple-A Salt Lake City Gulls.
A 9-5 record (though with a gnarly 6.05 ERA) got him a call up to the Halos in August. Kuhaulua posted a 15.63 ERA (!) in three appearances.
The Angels released him the next March, and he sat on the shelf until the Padres signed him as a free agent the following March (1979).
It was a natural fit since San Diego’s Triple-A team at the time was the Hawaii Islanders.
After three summers in his own backyard, though, Kuhaulua was heading back to the coast after The Strike concluded in the majors. He made five appearances for the Pads in September and October, four of them starts.
He went 1-0 with a 2.45 ERA that month, but it was too little, too late.
Kuhaulua spent his age-29 season, in 1982, back home with the Islanders, then he went home for good, done with baseball.
But, of course, Kuhaulua also spent that final summer of his baseball career popping out of wax packs, back-to-back with Gwosdz, looking off somewhere beyond the diamond.
Fred Kuhaulua was born 71 years ago today,
1977 Cramer Salt Lake City Gulls
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Kuhaulua may have had to wait until 1982 to get an official rookie card, but Cramer availed him to Salt Lake collectors back in 1977.
That year, the minor league card manufacturer produced a 24-card set of the Gulls, with the lefty checking in on card #12.
Other names on that team — and in that set — that might look familiar include Willie Aikens, Thad Bosley, Danny Goodwin, Rance Mulliniks, Luis Quintana, Chuck Dobson, and future major league manager Jimy Williams.
—
Alright, that’s another week in the books here at the old Dustbin Daily.
Just curious — how are you feeling about your favorite team now that Spring Training games are under way?
My Reds could be fun and interesting this year, courtesy of young guys like Elly De La Cruz, Christian Encarnacion-Strand, Hunter Greene, and others.
It will be a little strange not to see Joey Votto on the injured list for Cincy this summer, but who knows? Maybe he and Bartolo Colon will stage a tandem midseason comeback.
Big Sexy needs to find a way to reset his Hall of Fame clock, after all.
Thanks for reading.
—Adam