"Coach Les was mapping out the pitching rotation before the season even started and said, with 22 starts, Tats was going to be the first 20-game winner," recalled catcher Ron Nomura. "He was sure of it, too."

A quarter-century later, not only was Murakami's crystal ball correct and his ace up for the challenge, Tatsuno's 20-1 record of 1979 hasn't been topped.

It took seven years for somebody else, Mike Loynd of Florida State (20-3), to reach 20. But nobody has broken it and with the NCAA in the 1990s having limited teams to 56 regular-season games, the mark, along with Tatsuno's 234 strikeouts in a season, could stand for quite a while.

It was a season of wonder — 20 wins in 22 starts, 11 complete games and a 1.86 earned run average — that earned Tatsuno a place as one of three Division I Players of the Century by Collegiate Baseball and a spot on Baseball America's All-Century team.

These days the 46-year old Tatsuno is an employee of state Department of Transportation, but mention of his name still recalls the once-upon-a-time magic No. 16 brought to the ballpark and the excitement an entire state shared.

The Rainbows in general and Tatsuno in particular were sporting pied pipers, luring overflow crowds into — and even surrounding — "old" Rainbow Stadium, the 2,500-seat aluminum bleacher facility where 4,312-seat Murakami Stadium now stands.

Drafted out of 'Aiea High by the Cincinnati Reds, Tatsuno's arrival at UH gave the fledgling Rainbow baseball program its first star and he was up to the task going 20-5 with a 2.17 earned run average over his first two seasons.

Though he was known as, "The Franchise," Tatsuno wasn't the only talent on a team that went 38-14 as an independent while leading the nation in earned run average (1.93) and finishing fifth in fielding average (.968) in 1978. That's why, when the NCAA selection committee passed the Rainbows over for a 1978 postseason berth, Murakami got mad. Then, he got to work scheduling ... and scheduling.

Murakami vowed to play — and win — so many games the NCAA would have to sit up and take notice. So, he scheduled 86 in a statement-making gesture.

"It was like a pro schedule," Tatsuno said. "I knew he was mad (at the NCAA) but I didn't know it was going to be that many games."

Howard Dashefsky, a freshman first baseman-catcher, who had played but 15 games the year before in high school, said: "Between the fall (exhibition) league schedule and games against teams from Japan, we must have played 120 games in less than nine months."

Derek Tatsuno struck out an NCAA record 234 batters and led Hawai'i to the NCAA regionals in 1979. UH went 69-15 that season. Jeff Widener • The Honolulu Advertiser

Dashefsky, who served as bullpen catcher, said: "One of my duties was to warm him up and crowds of people would show up just to watch him throw in the bullpen."

That could be a show unto itself. "He was so good, so precise, with his pitches that, no matter where I moved the glove, I felt like I could have closed my eyes and he would have hit the glove," Dashefsky said. "But, with how hard he could throw, I wasn't stupid enough to test it."

It wasn't only what Tatsuno accomplished but how he went about it. Fun-loving on days when he wasn't scheduled to pitch, he was known to balance on a fence and hit fungoes. "But, he was in total concentration when he was playing," Nomura said. "That's why he was so special. It wasn't just the physical part, he possessed the mental part, too. That's why he was so tough to beat."

Nomura, who set an NCAA record for putouts (560) that season as Tatsuno's catcher, recalls, "On days he was pitching, he'd hardly say anything. When I'd go to the mound it was like a one-way conversation. In the dugout, he'd sit down and hardly talk to anybody."

When teammates say Tatsuno let his pitching speak for him, they weren't kidding. "When it would rain and he'd throw that curveball, it had such an amazing rotation on it that you could hear the thing buzzing up to the plate," Nomura said.

Tatsuno was on his game early that season, striking out 18 in a February contest against Oregon State and 17 later against Nebraska. The Rainbows won their first 12 games and then, after losing, went on another 12-game roll.

By the end of March, the Rainbows were 46-3 and No. 1 in the Collegiate Baseball rankings.

Tatsuno won his first 17 games before losing at Cal State-Fullerton, the eventual national champion, the week after being featured in Sports Illustrated.

Eventually, the Rainbows, who finished the regular season 67-13, got their bid to the NCAA regionals, where Tatsuno won his 20th game, beating Indiana State, 4-3.

When they play golf, Dashefsky, now a KHNL news anchor, likes to remind Tatsuno, "who hit the (425 foot) home run in the eighth inning to help him win his 20th."