The visitor’s roster featured first baseman Mark McGwire, who would lead college baseball in home runs, and imposing 6-foot, 10-inch pitcher Randy Johnson, who led the nation in making batters nervous.

But on  Feb. 17, 1984, they and the rest of the storied USC baseball program were but an afterthought.

The buzz in the University of Hawaii lower campus quarry that night, sometimes interrupted by the sounds of workmen hurriedly bolting down the last of the 4,312 seats, was for the debut of what was then known as Rainbow Stadium.

Once but a distant vision of legendary UH coach Les Murakami, the facility that has carried his name since 2002 begins its 31st season Friday with the ‘Bows playing Oregon.

"It doesn’t seem that long, not at all," said Kahai Shishido, who started at second base in 1984 and is now the athletic director at Baldwin High.

These days Shishido glimpses in the eyes of neighbor island players at the state championships some of the wonder he had upon the stadium’s opening. "The kids are excited to play there, just as we were," Shishido said.

Considered one of the top campus college baseball facilities in the country after its opening, it now shows its age in places not unlike a lot of buildings in Manoa, where maintenance or renovations have long been deferred.

Since Murakami Stadium’s rise, more than 100 new major college stadiums have popped up, many, such as Oregon’s plush $20 million PK Park in 2009, on the campuses of well-heeled Bowl Championship Series schools.

Yet Murakami Stadium still finds a place on the lists of the better stadiums, 29th among stadiumjourney.com’s 2013 rankings, for instance. "It isn’t in the top 20 anymore, but it is still a wonderful ballpark and we always enjoyed coming there," said Gene Stephenson, who retired last year after 36 years at Wichita State. "It remains a great atmosphere for college baseball."

So much so that the ‘Bows ranked 11th among 296 NCAA Division I schools in attendance last season and sometime this year figure to welcome the 3,500,000th fan through the stadium’s turnstiles.

That’s enduring testimony to the foresight of Murakami, who not only saw a prominent place for baseball at UH, but envisioned a stadium that would showcase it.

That wasn’t an easy thing to imagine back in the early 1970s, when he took over what was essentially a club program and the place it now calls home was a frequently puddle-filled parking lot. Baseball in the rock-strewn quarry was even harder to sell at a time when the Hawaii Islanders of the Pacific Coast League ruled among local fans.

Legend has it that it wasn’t until the first bulldozers showed up to begin scratching out a place for the original mid-1970s erector-set-like Rainbow Stadium that athletic director Paul Durham even knew it was happening.

The 2,500-seat aluminum bleacher facility, however, was but a temporary abode for the ‘Bows, who began to outgrow it soon after pitcher Derek Tatsuno arrived from Aiea High in 1977 and ticket lines snaked back toward the swimming pool.

But it was the ‘Bows’ amazing run to the championship game of the 1980 College World Series that sealed the deal. When Murakami glimpsed Gov. George Ariyoshi and a group of legislators walking into the lobby of the team’s hotel in Omaha, he said, "Well, it looks like we’re going to get our stadium now."

And what a stage the ‘Bows made of it with performances, including Paul Brown’s 1987 perfect game, Ross Kagawa’s three-run homer to beat Brigham Young and help bring UH back from the losers’ bracket for the 1989 WAC championship, and Kolten Wong’s three homers in a 2009 game.

There is something else that stamps Murakami Stadium as special: Its $11.2 million initial construction took just eight and a half months from groundbreaking to an on-time opening.

Reach Ferd Lewis at flewis@staradvertiser.com.