For two years Rich Olsen's presence on the mound for the University of Hawai'i baseball team has served as a pointed reminder of KKEA radio sportscaster Don Robbs' accumulating age.

Olsen's father, Richard, pitched in one of the first UH games Robbs broadcast in 1977, making him among the latest of a lengthening line of father-son examples of the sportscaster's remarkable endurance as the radio voice of Rainbow baseball.

Does Robbs feel old at 69?

"No way," he maintains. "What Rainbow baseball does is keep me young. "I'm old enough to be their (the players') grandfather, but being around them keeps me young. Being around 18-, 19-, 20-year-olds, keeps me going."

Which apparently accounts for Robbs beginning a milestone 30th season Wednesday when the 'Bows open against San Diego State at Les Murakami Stadium.

By his count, Robbs has done approximately 1,800 games, all but a handful the 'Bows have played since the 1977 NCAA Regional at then-Rainbow Stadium.

Through four radio stations, a half-dozen broadcast partners, three head coaches and a storage case of used scorebooks, Robbs has been a repository of Rainbow history and the only regular play-by-play radio voice of UH baseball.

At the beginning, he never imagined the half of it. Almost on a lark, Robbs talked KHVH owner Bob Berger into letting him do the 1977 NCAA Regionals with sidekick Jim Hackleman. "Berger was a big baseball fan and, in fact, once owned stock in the San Francisco Giants," Robbs said. "But he thought I was nuts. 'College baseball. Nah, I don't think so,' he said. But I talked him into it and he was fairly pleased enough that we made a bid for the whole season the next year."

Recalls Berger: "Don was a natural for it and we found quite an audience."

At the time only a few of the college powerhouses had regular radio broadcasts, none of them doing the entire schedule, home and away, of a then-NCAA record 84 games UH had in 1979.

Pitcher Derek Tatsuno's Pied Piper appeal followed by the magical College World Series runner-up season of 1980 blessed Robbs with a steady "part-time" job and a growing following. In the heydays of the 1980s, UH baseball was second only to football as an income producer for radio.

Thus began a wild, unimagined ride that has seen Robbs do games while sharing a picnic bench in a park at Fullerton, Calif., from the lanai of the women's dormitory at the University of San Francisco, from a mobile home at Wichita State and shivering at a card table in the snow at Brigham Young. Along the way he's dodged foul balls, fled a tornado and commandeered a municipal phone line or two.

Only an angioplasty and commitments to hosting the Easter Seals Telethon and Pro Bowl have kept him away from microphone. But never for long. For as former UH coach Les Murakami once observed for the fans, "it wouldn't be like Rainbow baseball without Don."

These days when Robbs is asked how much longer he plans to continue, the answer is easy. "As long as they let me and as long as I have my faculties and my health permits," Robbs maintains. The goal, he says, is to get back to Omaha, site of the College World Series, one more time.

So, he's presented coach Mike Trapasso with a request. "I told him, 'I don't know how much longer I'm going to be doing this, Trap, so you better get us back there soon.' "

Reach Ferd Lewis at flewis@honoluluadvertiser.com or 525-8044.