A Brief History of Coach Les and the Kelly Green and Sheridan Orange Colors.

In looking back on the legacy of Hawaii’s AJA League, one need look no farther than the kelly green and “Sheridan” orange colors worn by the University of Hawaii Rainbows baseball team.

When approached by University of Hawaii’s athletic director Paul Durham about coaching the University of Hawaii baseball team, Les Murikami was already winning championships as a coach for two teams,  the “Midas Muffler” softball team and the Japanese-American “Sheridan AC” baseball team.

When he joined the University of Hawaii as head coach of the fledging Rainbows team in 1971, the team had absolutely nothing—no facilities, not even a college-level playing schedule, and in fact, the players didn’t even have regular team uniforms. So, Coach Les went back to the Sheridan team he had played for and managed and borrowed their green, orange and white uniforms.

The OQSS Team had the opportunity to talk story with Coach Les on the day of the 2025 UH Alumni game and asked him the origin of the green and orange. Coach Les said, “You know what happened, at that time, the University of Hawaii they didn’t have money, so their uniforms…I looked at their uniforms and we were going on the road and all ripped up and all kine stuff, shit I cannot go on the road looking like this. So you know what I did, I was running the AJA team Sheridan. So what I did, I told my mother, take off Sheridan and put on Hawaii. So I took that and that was the color… Sheridan.”

The OQSS Team interviewing Coach Les at the 2025 University of Hawaii Alumni Game.

Les Murakami and Les Murakami Stadium Manager Glenn Nakaya.

Les Murakami’s game jersey back at the “Les”.

The early days of the UH program were humbling ones, says Coach Les. In many respects, the path traveled by the university’s squad parallels that of his old Sheridan team because small donations from the community kept both the Sheridan squad and the University of Hawaii program afloat. When you don’t have anything, you appreciate everything, he says. Coach Les remembers, “Just like with Sheridan. It was like a family operation. It was real grassroots. Even the concession was family-type.”

From time to time there have been attempts to drop the orange from the Bows’ uniforms to make them conform to the University of Hawaii’s standard green-and-white color scheme, but Coach Les has always resisted. He says, “Green and white doesn’t look as nice as green, orange, and white….”(K. Chinnen 2016)

Many thanks to Kevin Sebastian for the help with the photos for this post.

Chinnen, Karleen-C. “Hawaii’s AJA Play Ball” Discover Nikkei: Japanese Migrants and Their Descendents. 02 March, 2016. http://www.discovernikkei.org/en/journal/2016/3/3/hawaii-aja-2/