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WATCH: A tribute to college baseball legend Augie Garrido

6 years 2 days 22 hours ago Friday, March 16 2018 Mar 16, 2018 March 16, 2018 8:52 PM March 16, 2018 in Sports
By: Mike Gaither

Baton Rouge - LA,

Augie Garrido,

the all-time winningest head coach in college baseball history.

"Just a tremendous loss for college baseball as a whole," said Paul Mainieri after learning of the passing of his longtime friend.

Garrido had a storied 48-year baseball coaching career that spanned six decades. On Thursday Garrido passed away at the age of 79.

"The second game I coached in my 12 years at Notre Dame was against Cal State Fullerton and against Augie," Mainieri said. He had an unbelievable team and won the national championship that year."

Augie was considered a giant in college baseball.

"I think they were like 57-5 and they beat us 20-5 in game two of my time at Notre Dame," smiled Mainieri. I remember going back to my hotel room that night scratching my head saying what in the heck did I get myself into?"

In 48 seasons Garrido tallied 1,975 total wins, 15 world series appearances and five national championships.

Along with a long list of other accolades came a brilliant combination of wisdom and charm.

"You have to look far and wide to find people that didn't like Augie," admitted Mainieri. You know he always had time for you, he was always telling great stories."

On the field it was a different ball-game,

In 2008 Garrido's competitive fire created perhaps the most infamous profanity-laced post-game locker room speech of all-time.

After that tirade, Texas went on to win their next 10 games and Big 12 Conference Championship.

One year later Paul Mainieri had the opportunity to coach against Garrido in the College World Series where LSU defeated the Longhorns, the first National Championship for Mainieri.

"I'm sitting in my office just flooded by all these congratulatory notes and mail that's come in and all of a sudden I see this envelope with the return address University of Texas baseball and I said wow, I wonder what this is?"

So, with that Mainieri would open it to find an unexpected surprise.

"I opened it up and I had this personal hand written note from Augie and it really affected me an awful lot," Mainieri said. For him to sit down and write me a note, I just thought that was about as cool and classy thing as you could do."

Just three weeks ago, LSU baseball honroed two of the greatest college baseball coaches to ever do it. Augie Garrido and Skip Bertman who combined for 10 national titles threw out the first pitch here at Alex box Stadium.

For one final time two legends shared the field this time as great friends and some of the best innovators the game of college baseball has ever seen.

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