For the first time in baseball history, a Hawaiʻi-born player is set to manage a Major League team.
The Los Angeles Angels recently hired retired catcher Kurt Suzuki to lead the organization in 2026. The Wailuku native and Baldwin High School graduate will lead the MLB team with which he finished his playing career.
The move feels like a natural fit — Suzuki has spent the past three years since his retirement as a special assistant to the Angels’ general manager.
He recently talked with The Conversation about his approach to managing and how the earliest days playing the game on the Valley Isle still influence him.
"It's definitely a different change, but it's something that I'm really looking forward to, and I'm enjoying myself," he said.
As his career as a catcher neared its end in 2022, he began to think about his next steps in baseball.
"When you get older, especially being in my position, being a catcher, you're game planning, you're seeing the whole field. You're seeing the game from a different lens," Suzuki said.
"It's not about like, 'Oh, I'm trying to manage, so I'm going to think about what the manager's doing,' it's more organically, just watching the game, being excited in the moves that could be made, and just thinking along, which I feel like helped me as a player."
Suzuki said he plans to bring energy and communication to his managerial style every day.
"Through a season, you go through maybe 20 to 30 pitchers, and they all have different personalities, and you have to learn how to connect with each and every one of them," he said. "I feel like that's one of my strengths, is being able to connect, whether you're the No. 1 starting pitcher or you're a Minor League call-up."
While Suzuki has had many influential coaches locally and nationally throughout his career, he said that playing at Baldwin High shaped him into the player he is today.
"Jon Viela, Kahai Shishido — those two guys were, I guess, mentors in a sort of sense. They played in college, they understood the game of baseball, but they also understood being a good person, doing the right thing, being pono," Suzuki said.
"It instilled in myself, where towards the end of my career, I was talking to one of my teammates that played for a long time. He said, 'You don't have to just be talented to stay in this game a long time. You also have to be a good person, a good teammate.' And I think everything correlates, right, having the right values, it correlates to success. And I couldn't be more grateful for the mentors, the coaches that I've had throughout my career."
This story aired on The Conversation on Nov. 26, 2025. The Conversation airs weekdays at 11 a.m. Hannah Kaʻiulani Coburn adapted this story for the web.
