Ka Wai Ola - Office of Hawaiian Affairs, Volume 28, Number 8, 1 August 2011 — KOLTEN WONG steps onto his FIELD OF DREAMS [ARTICLE+ILLUSTRATION]

KOLTEN WONG steps onto his FIELD OF DREAMS

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Hilo, moving from the middle of the Paeihe Oeean to the center of the continental U.S. would be a traumatic experience. Except for Wong. Not to someone so dialed in on his childhood dream of playing in the big leagues. Wong, the 22nd overall player taken in the Major League Baseball First-Year Player draft by the St. Louis Cardinals out of the University of Hawai'iMānoa, began his professional career in June with the Single-A Quad Cities River Bandits in Davenport, Iowa.

"It's really humid," Wong said. "No oeean around here. I'm not a big water guy, so it's no big deal. You always miss home, but it's my job now. I'm just happy to be here playing." It hasn't bothered Wong a bit that the closest body of water is the Mississippi River, whieh llows next to where he plays at Modern Woodmen Park,

with the ieonie Centennial Bridge as a backdrop instead of Diamond Head when he played the past three seasons for the Rainbows at Les Murakami Stadium. Keala

Wong, Kolten's moth£

said her eldest son was either 3 or 4 years old when his father, Kaha, had him play in a county parks league, as he was too young for the regular youth leagues. For Kohen, sister Kiani, a softball player who will be a senior at Kamehameha-Hawai'i, and brother Kean, who also plays baseball and will be a junior at Waiākea High School, their lives revolved around the diamond. If they weren't playing in their youth league games, they were watching their father in adult baseball and softball leagues. "The kids basically grew up at the park," Keala Wong said. "We're a very close-knit family. Our camping is like hotels. We'll do things as a family, go to Waikoloa for the weekend, let the kids swim in the pool. Every where (else) we went on trips was mostly because of sports." But baseball became a preoccupation of Kolten's since he was 9, when he asked his father what it would take to be a big leaguer. Kaha told him of the extra work he had to put in to be better than anyone else on the field. That meant getting up early to run, working out in the weight room and countless hours in the batting cage. "My kids have no breaks during the summer like other kids have," Keala said. "Kaha feels by working with them, that's the only way they'll get better. He wants them to be able to compete against anybody. It's better now, but Hilo is such a laid-back town, where kids only want to play the sport when it's that season." And extra work didn't stop when Kohen left the Big Island to play at UH. It wasn't unusual to find ► him taking extra hitting in the early morning at Kāhala field before a Sunday afternoon ' Rainbows game. Kohen is seeing his hard work payoff. "I've been training for this my whole life,"

Kohen said. "To get this shot, I'mjust happy to be playing and starting." No doubt, there will be trials andtribulations along the way for Wong. But he knows he will better be able to handle them than if he had signed professionally out of high school. In 2008, he was a 16th-round piek by the Minnesota Twins after graduating from Kamehameha-Hawai'i. Negotiations lasted until the signing deadline in mid-August. The Twins tempted the then-17-year-old Wong whh a $120,000 signing bonus. Instead, he honored his letter of intent to play for the University of Hawai'iMānoa. "That's one thing about college: it allows you to grow up, mature," Wong i said. "I don't think I was mature out of I high school. I was still young. I was 17. Ē I didn't understand how tough it is (in m the minor leagues)." . H The Rainbows' top recruit - he verbally committed to UH when he was a junior at KS-Hawai'i - lived up to expectations. He was a three-time All-Western Athletic Conference selection, named WAC Freshman of the Year in 2009, and made numerous All-America teams as a junior. In only three seasons, he is second on the school's all-time home run list with 25, five behind all-time leader John Matias. After his freshman season, he played for the USA Team during the summer. The summer before - I his junior season, he was the prestigious Cape Cod League MVP. That elevated his status SEE W0NG ŪN PAGE 33

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ln three seasons at UH, Kolten Wong is second only te John Matias on the school's all-lime home run list. - Photo: Courtesy of Hawai'i Athletics. INSET: Two-year-old Kolten in Vancouver, British Columbia, where his father played in the. minor leagues. - Familyphotos cdurtesyofthe Wong 'ohana.

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Continued from page 19 for the draft, whieh he heeame eligible for again after his third college season. The difference: He signed a $1.3 million bonus, more than 10 times his offer out of high school. Better still, he has three years toward his degree out of way. As of mid-July, the 5-foot-9, 190-pound, left-handed hitting second baseman was holding up well in the Midwest League. He was playing regularly and was hitting .333 with two home runs in 15 games. It's too early to tell how long it will take Wong to reach the major leagues. He got a brief taste when he signed his contract last month at St. Louis' Busch Stadium, where he got to take batting practice and meet the big leaguers. His Quad Cities team is in Low Single-A. The natural progression is High Single-A, Double-A and Triple-A. He will advance only as fast as he progresses. It could be one to three years, or sometimes longer. But a

big sign that he is on the fast track to the big leagues is that he will play in the Arizona Fall League in October. The league is for prospects who are about a year away from promotion to the big leagues. So that means more time away from home. And unless Hawai'i gets a major league team, he will have to chase his dream away from the Islands. "The only thing I bring from Hawai'i is all my heart," Kolten said. "I know where I'm from. I know where I've been raised. It feels good to be from Hawai'i; it helps you show how strong you are as a person. A lot of kids go away and eome back because they get homesick. This shows how mueh I want to be here and how mueh I want to be a professional baseball player." To keep up with Wong, his team 's web site is riverbandits.com. B Stacy Kaneshiro covered sports for the Honolulu Advertiser for 19 '/2years and has been pubīished in USA Today and Baseball America.