Stephenson, ’Bows go back 39 years, give or take a few

The exact year is something that Gene Stephenson says the passing of the decades has made him a little fuzzy on.

But whether the fortuitous friendship with Les Murakami and enduring relationship with the University of Hawaii baseball team had its remarkable beginnings in 1973, as he suspects, or  ’74, hardly matters now. Only that it is renewed tonight at Murakami Stadium.

Stephenson, now 66 and the second-most-victorious coach in college baseball (1,768-625-3), was a young assistant at the University of Oklahoma charged with scheduling when he and Murakami bumped into each other at a national coaches convention. The chance meeting produced a handshake deal with a coach whose name he couldn’t pronounce for the Sooners to play a six-game series in 1975 with a fledgling UH team he hadn’t known existed.

“But I’d been to Hawaii on military R&R from Vietnam in 1971 and I thought, ‘If he’s willing to have a baseball team there, then we should try to be one of the first ones to come in and play,’” Stephenson recalled. “I had no idea what it would be like.”

From such uncertain and initially lopsided beginnings — Oklahoma won all six games, outscoring UH 56-19 —  a bond emerged and a history began to unfold.

One that was transferred to Wichita State when Stephenson began that program from scratch in 1978.  When UH and Wichita State open a four-game series tonight, it will mark the 18th time that Stephenson has brought a team here to play the Rainbows, 17 of them in Wheat Shocker black and yellow.

Among nonconference opponents, Wichita State, a 27-time NCAA tournament participant, has become a brand-name scheduling staple and a competitive yardstick for the Rainbows on a nearly biennial basis.

When Stephenson went to Wichita, Murakami returned the earlier scheduling favor. When Stephenson wanted a marquee opponent for his new home field in 1981, Murakami added a two-game stopover amid a WAC road swing.

Over the years in a series Wichita State leads 21-18, the teams have engaged in some knock-down battles and spared few barbs. “Back in the days when there was a lot of bench jockeying allowed, we’d get after each other pretty good,” Stephenson said. “One year we won the first three games (in the series) and Les finally told his players to, ‘just shut up and play.’ We didn’t get as fired up after that and they won,” Stephenson laughed.

Once, when Wichita State was leading the nation in scoring, Greg Oniate and the ’Bows blasted out an 18-12 triumph in Wichita and Murakami threw the team a party at its hotel to celebrate. The

Shockers won the Rainbow Easter Tournament six times.

Yet, so close have the two programs become that Stephenson was a regular at UH booster club functions. When veteran umpire Hide Yamashita died, Stephenson came back for a remembrance.

And when Mike Trapasso succeeded Murakami in 2003, the come-anytime welcome mat was put out again.

How much longer the series can continue beyond next year’s scheduled date in an era of escalating airfares, Stephenson hesitates to guess.

“But we’ve certainly had something special going for a long time now,” Stephenson said. Long enough that the dates matter little.    
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Reach Ferd Lewis at flewis@staradvertiser.com or 529-4820.