He’s Back Where He Belongs

There is a rustling in the cornfield, a parting in the sea of green. There we find Augie Garrido, clad again in blue and orange, looking for something or someone--probably a place to play or someone with deeper pockets than Shoeless Joe Jackson.

Beneath Garrido’s feet, words appear:

IF YOU BUILD IT, HE WILL COME.

We are not hallucinating.

We are merely inspecting the planned cover art for the 1991 Cal State Fullerton baseball media guide.

“It came to us while we were watching ‘Field of Dreams’ at a baseball camp,” says Fullerton sports information director Mel Franks. “It hit us like a vision.”

Insidious movie, that “Field of Dreams.” It drives people to a wide variety of bizarre behavior. Like praising it in public.

But Garrido is cornfield-bound because, stranger still, he is Fullerton-bound. For Round II, against all odds.

How can this be happening? How does Fullerton, a.k.a. Cal State Stepping Stone, shift an entire athletic history into reverse and reclaim a winning coach who once did what almost all winning coaches at Fullerton do--leave?

The Titans shoo coaches, don’t they?

Talk about comeback of the year. Garrido builds the Fullerton baseball program from the sandlot up, installs a lighted stadium, installs two NCAA championships, basically takes the Titans further than they ever had reason to expect--and three years later, agrees to hitch up with Mission Impossible all over again.

In a rough 12 months for Fullerton athletics, out of the blue comes a shining victory. Titan football players get their mug shots up on post office bulletin boards. The Fullerton basketball team, with Cedric Ceballos and three other returning starters, lands in the dumpster. Financial cutbacks nearly pull the plug on Dick Wolfe’s nationally ranked men’s gymnastics program.

Even when Larry Cochell’s Titans advance to the College World Series, they are ousted in two quick defeats, one by those perennial Beasts of the Southeast, the Bulldogs of The Citadel.

But Augie has returned.

It’s all right to be a Titan again.

For the past three days, new university president Milton Gordon, Athletic Director Ed Carroll and assistant athletic director Steve DiTolla have been busy taking bows, probably justifiably. This was a public-relations triumph, for one and for all.

For Gordon, the Garrido rehiring sends just the recommitment-to-sports message his office was seeking. For Carroll, it’s a neat way to recoup the substantial loss of Cochell. And for DiTolla, the point man in the Garrido negotiations, it’s an impressive shot in the resume for a young and rising athletic administrator.

But the main man in the operation was none other than Garrido. Fullerton may have wanted Augie but Augie, according to friends, wanted Fullerton even more.

As a Californian coaching baseball at the University of Illinois, Garrido was in no-man’s land. He was lured there by the man who hired him at Fullerton, Neale Stoner, then the athletic director at Illinois. Stoner was a man with a plan--to turn this Big 10 football and basketball school onto baseball--but soon, he was a man without a job. When Illinois football Coach John Mackovic replaced Stoner, Garrido lost not only a crucial ally but also the fight to keep his baseball program out of the minor sports division.

Garrido won two Big 10 championships at Illinois. Friends came less easily. The other day, he recalled one of the first speeches he gave as Illini baseball coach, as the featured speaker at a prestigious fund-raising dinner. Not one person clapped when Garrido was introduced.

Because he was perceived as a Stoner bobo, because he arrived with a six-figure salary and because he came across as a sun-tanned, slick-tongued Newport Beach hustler, Garrido ran into instant resentment in Champaign. It also snowed a lot in Champaign. That, Garrido resented.

At first, the handwriting on the wall was in pencil; when Garrido’s top assistant, Bill Kernan, left to become head coach at Cal State Northridge, Garrido was not permitted to replace him. The ink came later, when Garrido’s three-year contract expired and Illinois requested he take a pay cut.

Call it fortuitous timing. Garrido wanted out and when Cochell jumped from Fullerton to Oklahoma, he saw an opening. Fullerton only had to meet him halfway.

Good thing too. Fullerton can barely afford halfway.

Garrido will inherit some of his old problems--not enough funds already raised--and some new ones, too. Garrido’s first two seasons back will be spent off-campus, at Amerige Park, while the hard hats complete assembly on Fullerton’s $8 million multi-sports complex, which is to include a 1,500-seat baseball facility.

Garrido will tackle it Augie style. Brightly, he notes that he has been pledged support in the fight for scholarships and equipment. Glancing at Amerige Park, he grins and bears it, claiming, “I love a challenge.”

A step in the right direction? Garrido can only hope. Inside the Fullerton athletic department, however, they already know.

“Ask the average guy on the street in Northridge what he knows about Cal State Fullerton,” Franks suggests, “He’ll say, ‘Good baseball team, Augie Garrido, Leon Wood and their football team never plays at home.”

That pretty much sums it up.

Good to have Augie as part of the equation again.