Fullerton’s Voice of Experience : Baseball: When Coach Augie Garrido speaks, his Titan baseball players listen--with reverence.

To say Cal State Fullerton baseball players treat their new coach with respect would be an understatement. Reverence would better describe the players’ feelings toward Augie Garrido, whose second term as Titan coach begins today when Fullerton plays Cal Poly Pomona at Amerige Park.

“He’s like the equivalent of Lou Holtz in football,” junior outfielder Dave Ayala said. “You hear so much about the guy and he knows so much about the game, you have so much respect for him. You can see it in the guys’ eyes when he talks. Everyone is focused on him. He really knows his stuff.”

To junior pitcher James Popoff, it’s not only what Garrido says, it’s his tone of voice.

“When he talks, it’s not like he’s just talking, and it’s not like he’s yelling,” Popoff said. “It’s hard to explain, but it really sets in your mind. It’s a strong, firm voice and you listen.”

It’s a voice of experience, of success, of knowledge and of confidence. Garrido, 51, has been a head college baseball coach for 22 years, compiling an 888-425-7 record, including a 667-292-6 mark at Fullerton from 1973-87.

In 15 seasons at Fullerton, Garrido’s teams won two national championships (1979 and ‘84), four NCAA regional titles and 12 conference championships. He returns after three seasons at Illinois, where he won two Big Ten titles.

When Garrido replaced Larry Cochell as Titan coach last summer, he didn’t need to establish credibility at Fullerton. Players were aware of his success and his reputation as a motivator, a coach who gets the most out of his athletes.

Now, after only a few weeks with Garrido on the practice field, the players are sold on him.

“He can give you a talk and you’ll run through a brick wall for him,” senior catcher Matt Hattabaugh said. “There’s no second-guessing him. What he says is the law, and it’s a proven law. He’s been a winner wherever he’s gone.”

Garrido’s Law is pretty simple: You give your best effort all the time--in practice, in games, during conditioning--and you’ll earn his respect. Garrido’s Law went into effect quickly.

“There are no loose practices anymore--they’re all intense,” sophomore shortstop Phil Nevin said. “It’s like night and day from last year. We used to screw around during batting practice, but now everyone’s doing something. We get after it.”

Garrido is a big proponent of drilling game-like situations in practice and bringing competition to even the most mundane tasks. He’ll often pit position players against each other, grading them on their entire workout and declaring a winner after practice.

The loser runs.

Some days Garrido will have individual competitions, in which players will have a list of things to do, such as bunt, drag bunt, squeeze bunt and a hit-and-run. For each one a player doesn’t perform correctly, he has to run a lap. It’s demanding, but the players don’t seem to mind.

“One guy ran three miles one day,” Hattabaugh said. “Last year, if someone didn’t get a bunt down, Cochell didn’t do anything. But Augie is making the fundamentals important to us. That’s what he stresses. If you play the game fundamentally sound, you can play with anyone.”

To understand the forces that shaped Garrido’s coaching philosophy, one must go back 32 years, to the day Garrido first set foot on Fresno State’s baseball field for practice in 1959.

Little did Garrido know that he was about to have a conversation with Bulldog Coach Pete Beiden that would change his life.

Beiden: Where’s your position?

Garrido: Second base.

Beiden: How long have you played it?

Garrido: A few years.

Beiden: So where’s your position?

Garrido: (Pause) Uh, between first and second somewhere. Beiden: No, it isn’t. It’s 10 steps over and 12 steps back (from second base). That’s your basic position with a straight-away, right-handed hitter up.

“Since then, I always knew I wanted to be a coach, even when I was playing pro ball,” Garrido said. “Pete was the first coach I met who had concrete answers to the game.”

Since then, through his six-year, minor league playing career, through all his years as a coach, Garrido has paid attention to every intricate detail of the game, absorbing them, storing them and passing them along to his players.

“My overall philosophy is that coaches many times can let players fail, let them fall short of reaching their full potential,” Garrido said. “I try not to do that. I don’t want a player to say later on, ‘I wish I knew then what I know now.’ ”

So he gives them everything. Garrido said he still sees articles about Montreal Expo third baseman Tim Wallach, star of the Titans’ 1979 team, in which Wallach credits Garrido for teaching him the fundamentals of the game.

But Garrido said he stresses fundamentals now more than he ever did.

“I think everything about the game is important,” he said. “It’s a game of details. In almost every situation, losing comes as a result of mental or physical mistakes.”

Garrido is not the type to delegate on-the-field responsibilities to assistants. He immerses himself in every practice. One minute he’s telling an infielder how to position his feet on a double-play pivot, the next he’s teaching an outfielder how to go back on a fly ball, the next he’s helping a batter hit to the opposite field.

“We work on the little things every single day,” Ayala said. “Last year, we kind of rolled the balls out and the coach would say, ‘Go get ‘em boys.’ I’ve learned so much more this year.”

Whatever Ayala learns this season would be a fraction of the knowledge Garrido has acquired over the years. In Garrido’s office are several shelves of spiral-bound notebooks filled with practice schedules, drills and notes.

Garrido isn’t just involved with baseball. He has lived it and breathed it for decades, and it’s to a point now that when he discusses the game, it’s as if he’s talking about an animate object.

“To me there’s a spirit about the game,” Garrido said. “If you’re really playing it hard, then the intangibles kick in for you. Things happen. You get lucky. It’s almost like the game knows when you’re really trying.

“But if you’re not doing that, you never get lucky and the game very seldom gives you something for nothing.”

The intangibles were there for Fullerton in 1979 and ‘84, when the Titans won national titles with teams that Garrido said weren’t the most talented in the country.

“They played baseball better than the other teams,” Garrido said.

Garrido has a similar team this year. The Titans aren’t loaded with talent, but don’t count them out of the Big West Conference race.

“Augie is an intense individual who doesn’t settle for anything less than winning,” Nevin said. “That’s the way it should be.”

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