Kevin Costner’s forward to Garrido’s book, Life Is Yours To Win, gives a lot insight into the man, not just the coach.
“People are motivated by fear,” he explained to ESPN’s Ryan McGee in the fall of ’08. “Not fear like ‘I’m going to beat you up if you don’t do this,’ but fear of failure. It’s the great internal battle every athlete and coach has to fight. On one side you have expectations and the other you have failure. Which do you allow to push you in one direction or the other? The fear of expectation or the excitement of expectation? Does the fear of failure motivate you to do whatever it takes not to fail, or does the fear cause you to fail? I’m talking about baseball here. But I’m also talking about life.”
Garrido built Cal State Fullerton into a college baseball powerhouse. He was hired by Texas in 1997 and the rest is history.
Garrido was college baseball’s all-time winningest coach.
This is pure Augie:
When the athletic director complained about having enough money for the football program, Augie’s response was simple. “You need a million dollars? Pick up the phone! We can have a dump truck unload a million dollars in the end zone by the end of business today”.
That same AD made a comment about keeping up with the Joneses.
“Keeping up with the Joneses?!” he bellowed. “Hell, we ARE the Joneses!”
Pure Augie