IT'S with a sense of foreboding that the WAC playoff hopes of Les Murakami's baseball Rainbows depend so heavily on a three-game sweep at Brigham Young University starting today. Strange things happen
to ’Bows in ProvoAfter all, BYU's Provo campus has proved to be hell on earth for the University of Hawaii Rainbows. In all sports, not just baseball.
Remember? BYU ended the University of Hawaii men's volleyball hopes just the other week in Provo. Man, we can't even beat 'em in our own sport -- volleyball.
Football? A picture of abject futility. The Rainbows have yet to win a game in Provo. The closest they've come was 41-38, after missing a can't-miss field goal in the final 42 seconds of the game.
Basketball? Let me count the losses. The UH hoopsters are 2-16 at Provo. The 'Bows won at the Marriott Center two years ago and during the 1988-89 season when they beat BYU three times to the unabashed joy of Rainbow fans. But that's all, folks.
And wouldn't you know? The one time they could have beat the "B" out of BYU -- the past season when the Cougars had their worst team ever -- they weren't scheduled to play. New Mexico was the crossover game, not BYU as it was in football.
SOMEHOW, it's baseball that seems to bring out the beast in BYU as far as UH fans are concerned. Tell Murakami about it.
"Strange things have happened here," Murakami said in a telephone interview. Maybe not Stephen King strange, but forever haunting nevertheless.
The baseball 'Bows are 6-15-2 in Provo. Three of the defeats are among the most painful ever suffered in UH's proud baseball history.
Who can forget that Black Monday -- May 18, 1981 -- in Provo when the Cougars beat the Rainbows in both ends of a doubleheader to win the WAC championship and advance to the NCAA Regionals?
What was remarkable was that BYU used a pitcher from Hawaii, Radford's Peter Kendrick, to beat the 'Bows.
Not only did Kendrick win the opener, 11-4, he started and won the second game as well, 3-1. Talk about double-dipping.
"I'm not haunted by it, but I'll never forget it," Murakami said.
The entire scenario preceding the hastily scheduled doubleheader was bizzaro, as far as Murakami was concerned.
Originally, the teams were scheduled to play a single game on Friday and a doubleheader on Saturday. But the games were postponed because of sleet. And since it's never on Sunday for BYU -- not that they could have played anyway -- they decided to play a twinbill on Monday for the entire shooting match.
That gave BYU Coach Gary Pullins the opportunity to pitch Kendrick in both games, since they were seven-inning affairs. And Kendrick turned out to be an inspired choice.
THE other loss at Provo that still has Murakami shaking his head was a critical WAC playoff game in 1985. Down by two runs in the eighth inning, the 'Bows had the bases loaded with one out.
But they came up empty on a controversial double-play call. Randy Oyama, the runner at first, was called for interference trying to break up the play and it wound up as an inning-ending double play. "No way that was interference," Murakami insists to this day.
The day of that game? The same as that of the 1981 doubleheader losses -- May 18. Like Murakami said, strange things happen to the Rainbows in Provo.
"I came here with great teams and major league pitching and came away empty," he said.
Now he's in Provo with a not-so-great team and ineffective pitching. No wonder there's a sense of foreboding.