Habe on the Horns: Garrido was so much more than a baseball coach

By Steve Habel, Senior Contributing Writer

AUSTIN, Texas — By now you’ve likely heard about the passing last Thursday of legendary Texas baseball coach Augie Garrido from complications of a stroke, and surely have read many of the tributes after his death from fans, former players, major league baseball legends and even many journalists who covered Coach Garrido through the years.

I was one of those reporters, and I want to tell you that I’m still really hurting. I can’t believe Coach Garrido is gone.

When I was informed of his death, I was in a restaurant in Chinatown in New York City, with my wife, my college-aged daughter and her life-long friend on a quick vacation. I had to excuse myself and take a few minutes [s2If current_user_can(access_s2member_level2)]outside to try to get ahold of my emotions, losing the battle in a dark, cold landing on a street in the Big Apple, the tears freezing on my face because of the frigid wind off the Hudson River.

I’ll miss Coach Garrido like he was a big brother, even though he was old enough to be my father. I have always gravitated toward older men as my best friends; maybe it was because I have always so admired what coaches do and the way they do it, or maybe it’s because I was taught to respect my elders and people of authority.

Coach Garrido was all about baseball and how it was a microcosm of life itself, with its failures and the continued opportunity to make amends with the next at-bat or the next grounder heading your way. Coach Garrido and I spent a lot of time together over his 20 seasons as Texas’ coach, hours he spent just talking to me about my family and how I was a good father and how he respected my work and liked my writing.

I liked him — no, it was more than that — because he was always himself. Even though he was usually the most accomplished man in any room, Coach Garrido was always the most popular as well, and that’s a difficult thing for most people to accomplish.

I enjoyed bouncing baseball scenarios off of him, and he reveled in telling me that no matter how much I thought I knew about the game that I still had so much to learn.

We talked a lot about golf — I’m a low-handicap player who has teed it up around the world on more than 1,200 courses — and how that game was so like baseball in how it reveals character and dignity and the ability to overcome, or accept your shortcomings and strive to get better.

For the record, Coach Garrido compiled a collegiate record of 1,975-919-9 over his 48-year, six-decade coaching career. He retired in 2016 as the coach with the most wins in college baseball history. He took his programs to 15 College World Series, winning five of them: three with Cal State Fullerton and two with Texas.

Coach Garrido had 10-fold friends for every one of his coaching victories because he was kind, and sincere, and even respectful, as both a coach and as a man. There never will be another one like Coach Garrido; there’s a hole in all of our hearts that can never be filled but will grow smaller in time. At least that’s what I hope.

Somewhere in the great above, Coach Garrido is looking down and ordering the take sign to a hitter with a 2-0 count or giving the sign for a bunt. Woe be the player who misses either or is out of positon in the infield or misses the cut-off man with a throw from the outfield.

If Coach Garrido finds the time to read this, I just want him to know that I owe him — he will know what that means.

The Habe is Steve Habel, former senior editor of Horns Illustrated and now a senior contributing writer. Habel was this magazine’s first employee, in 1994.

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