Kurt Suzuki remembers his Maui roots as he prepares for high-profile job as manager of Los Angeles Angels

The Suzuki family recently held a vote: Should Kurt Suzuki, a Wailuku native and 2001 Baldwin High School graduate, take the uber-demanding, massive time-consuming, under-the-spotlight job of managing Major League Baseball’s Los Angeles Angels?

Taking that position also would mean that Suzuki, a former Major League catcher, would have to step down as manager of two other jobs: managing 12-year-old Kainoah’s and 9-year-old Elijah’s SoCal Pono club baseball teams.

But when the Suzuki boys were told that their father would have an office and locker in the Los Angeles clubhouse — and that they would get to hang out with some of their favorite Angels players during home stands — they both gladly voted “yes.” Wife Renee and 15-year-old daughter Malia, a standout volleyball player, made it unanimous.

Kai was 9 years old and Eli just 6 when their father played his last Major League game with the Angels — on Oct. 4, 2022, his 39th birthday.

“They can hang out in the clubhouse, so it’s definitely fun,” Kurt Suzuki said during a recent phone interview with the Hawaiʻi Journalism Initiative. “They can be around the boys. They’re a lot older now … they have the relationships with the players, the (Mike) Trouts and the (Zach) Netos, and the (Nolan) Shanuels and the (Logan) O’Hoppes. So, that’s something that they’re excited about.”

Suzuki was hired to run the Angels with no professional or college managerial experience. But he is well known to the organization. Suzuki played his last two seasons with the Angels in 2021 and 2022, and for the past three years has been serving as a front-office consultant to general manager Perry Minasian.

Suzuki said he is “still blown away” by the Angels’ decision.

And he said he is humbled to be the first full-time Major League Baseball manager from the state of Hawai‘i as he prepared to go to MLB’s Winter Meetings that began Dec. 7 in Orlando, Fla.

But those who know the 42-year-old Suzuki well said what he lacks in managerial experience he makes up for with his 16 years of running the show behind the plate in the Big Leagues. Catching is a position that requires deep knowledge of the game, its players, strategy and the ability to direct action on every pitch.

“When you think about the pitchers that he’s caught for, the hitters that he had to figure out how to get them to swing and miss, how to get them out, that experience is huge,” said Shane Dudoit, an associate scout for the Texas Rangers and current head coach at Kamehameha Schools Maui.

“He was somebody that studied the hitters, studied the strengths of his pitchers and matched it up that way. … just a cognitive thinking. He’s got it in a big way. He always did have it.”

Suzuki has been studying opponents since he walked onto the Bears’ practice field on the upper campus in the spring of 1998 at age 14. Kahai Shishido was the Baldwin High School head baseball coach at the time. He still fondly refers to Suzuki as “Pup,” Suzuki’s nickname from those early days at Baldwin.

“Watching him grow from the high school player to the person he is today is something that is so rewarding to see as a coach,” Shishido said. “It’s great that he made it to the major leagues and he’s now a major league manager. But to see him grow into the person that he is, the father that he is, the husband that he is, is probably the thing that is the most rewarding for me to see.”

Shishido was one of the first people that Suzuki called to share the news that he had landed the Angels manager gig. Shishido, his wife Wendy Shishido and daughter Keisha Shishido were all special guests at Suzuki’s final game in 2022.

“I know he will be be prepared; he has always been a student of the game,” Kahai Shishido said. “He’s respected, not only by the Angels, but I think by Major League Baseball in general. He’s confident in what he wants to do and I guarantee no manager is going to outwork him. … His communication skills are unbelievable.”

Suzuki said he hopes to show the baseball world there are a “lot of talented baseball-minded guys from Hawaiʻi. If I can help put Hawaiʻi on the map in that regard, that’s something that I’m proud to do and I’m excited to do.”

Suzuki will start his managerial career with just a one-year contract, which is rare in the major leagues. Suzuki said he is not concerned, especially since he is working under Minasian, with whom he has grown close as his consultant.

“They came with this and I said, ‘Hey, listen, it doesn’t scare me.’ I’ve had to prove myself every single year that I played,” he said.

Suzuki noted the last six years of his playing career were all played with one-year contracts. And he added that Minasian said it best during the press conference that introduced him: “We’re basically all in one-year deals. If you don’t perform, then you’re going to get fired.”

Suzuki played with five major league teams, including the Washington Nationals three different times, and finished No. 32 on the all-time games caught list with 1,540. He currently is No. 26 all-time in MLB innings caught with 12,968 2/3.

Among Hawai‘i-born major leaguers, Suzuki is the all-time leader in hits (1,420), games (1,633), plate appearances (6,160), at-bats (5,561), walks (387), doubles (295), home runs (143) and RBIs (729).

Suzuki won a World Series championship in 2019 with the Washington Nationals and was an American League All-Star in 2014 with the Minnesota Twins.

As his career was winding down as a catcher with a reputation for handling pitching staffs with remarkable expertise, Suzuki often said he did not think he would stay in the game as a manager.

“It was something that happened organically,” Suzuki said. “The last three years after my playing career, I was in the front office, special assistant to the GM. And that was more so to keep my foot in the door, stay around the game. The first couple of years, I really didn’t have any aspirations of potentially managing.”

That attitude changed in the last year as his children grew older and his love of the game lingered.

“This past year, being around the team a little bit more, talking to Perry a little bit more, the front office guys more, it kind of intrigued me a little bit, just kind of watching how the game has evolved, watching how analytics came into a role,” Suzuki said. “And I just felt after three years, you kind of get an itch, not to play, but to be involved a little bit more in the game.”

Kula native Kanekoa Texeira, 39, who has been a minor league manager in the Atlanta Braves organization for five years, the last two at the AAA level, one step below the major leagues, said he knows that things will not be easy for Suzuki as a major league manager, especially with no managerial experience.

But Texeira, who also was a minor league pitching coach for three seasons after his professional playing career as a right-handed relief pitcher ended in 2016, said he is confident his fellow Maui major leaguer can handle it.

“Managing is a little bit different than in game playing,” said Texeira, who pitched for the Seattle Mariners and Kansas City Royals in 2010 and 2011. “That’s what I realized personally, myself. That’s why you got a lot of coaches on your side.

“They stockpiled him with some good coaches to help him out in his first year and hopefully when the season starts going he gets into a little roll, a little groove, and knowing Kurt, it will just come naturally where he’s going to be successful.” 

Texeira and Suzuki faced each other in the major leagues once, in 2010 when Texeira pitched for the Seattle Mariners and Suzuki was playing for the Oakland A’s. 

“I got to face Kurt in the big leagues and the first time I faced him, I hit him,” Texeira said Thursday. “Hit by pitch … it wasn’t on purpose. After the game I texted him and said ‘my bad.’ He just said, ‘Ah, it didn’t hurt. You don’t throw hard enough.’ So, me and Kurt always had some fun with that.”

Kimo Higa, an assistant on the Baldwin baseball staff, was a senior when Suzuki was a freshman for the Bears. Higa took Suzuki under his wing during the one year they spent together on the Baldwin baseball team and have remained extremely close friends.

“At a young age you could tell Kurt had a strong passion for baseball,” Higa said. “You could tell Kurt was going to be a special baseball player when he entered high school. His discipline, dedication, high baseball IQ and competitive nature stood out as a freshman.”

When Suzuki returns home to Maui he and Higa hang out just like old times.

“It’s always cool when he comes home,” Higa said. “If you didn’t know him, you wouldn’t think he played in the major leagues for 16 years and is now a manager for the Los Angeles Angels. With all that he’s accomplished, his down-to-earth personality is what’s so cool about him. Whenever we get a chance to see each other, it’s always fun talking story and just joking around. Just like it was back in the day.”

Suzuki has gained a reputation for coming home and giving back to the community that raised him, putting on many free baseball clinics at Maehara Stadium in Wailuku through his Kurt Suzuki Family Foundation. In 2019, future Hall of Fame slugger Albert Pujols participated in the clinic after being asked by Suzuki. The two had the same agent, but never played on the same team. Texeira has also helped out at Suzuki’s clinics.

The Kurt Suzuki Family Foundation has raised more than $500,000 to support nonprofits across Hawai‘i and California since 2012. In 2017, Kurt Suzuki reached out to Trucker Dukes, a 3-year-old Maui boy who died after a battle with cancer that inspired millions worldwide, via The Players Tribune.

At one point in the article, Kurt Suzuki wrote, “Maybe you wanted to pretend you were a hero. Well let me tell you, Trucker. You don’t have to pretend. Because you are a hero.”

The Suzukis have been front and center of several other charitable causes. Their Pono baseball teams are modeled after the All Pono Foundation run by Jon and Maile Viela on Maui since 2007 in memory of their 3-year-old son Jrew Kūpono, who died in 2004 in a tragic accident.

Jon Viela was an assistant coach for the Bears when Suzuki was there and the Vielas were also special guests at Suzuki’s final game in 2022.

The All Pono Foundation which has a motto of “PONO, Do What Is Right,” helped with Suzuki’s baseball clinics before they ended in 2020 due to challenges from COVID-19. The Vielas’ foundation helped Suzuki start his SoCal Pono travel baseball teams three years ago that Kai and Eli Suzuki play on.

“Kurt believing in our message, he wanted to help and spread that message across to the people he can reach in Southern California,” Jon Viela said. 

Suzuki becoming an MLB manager does not surprise Viela. When Suzuki started his Pono SoCal baseball teams shortly after he retired as a player it was a natural progression, according to Jon Viela, who also gave massive credit to Suzuki’s parents, Kathleen and Warren Suzuki.

Warren Suzuki was diagnosed with stage 4 kidney cancer in 2007 and has since gone into remission with treatment. His father’s disease was a major reason Kurt and Renee Suzuki started their foundation.

“When he jumped on board, meaning that he believed in the value of Pono and the value of doing the right thing and how that can be instilled in all of our youths and also how it can spread throughout our community,” Viela said. “It wasn’t something that Maile and I envisioned and it wasn’t something that we had to tell him to do. … He had it in him already from his childhood because his parents raised him to be that way … It was a natural path for him.”

Kurt Suzuki said that his Maui roots run deep and always will.

“That’s the most important thing. I was born and raised on an island and in a state that means so much to me,” Suzuki said. “I tell people when I get interviewed, it’s the role I’m in now. The role I had been (as a player) was if I can be a good role model to these kids and now being a manager, it’s if I can be a good role model to some of these coaches that are coaching in the youth and high school levels. 

“That’s what’s most important to me because the people, whether I know them or I don’t know them in the state — everybody that’s born and raised or living in Hawai‘i — mean a lot to me, the support that they give me whenever I come home.”