As many of my blog followers already know, I have had three different and distinctive 10 year careers. Started in College Athletics Fund Raising/ Marketing, then CPG Sales/ Marketing, and lastly Technology Sales/ Marketing. Like to to write about lessons learned and how they relate to my battle with ALS.
Have already written about the last two a few times, so today will switch gears and talk about College Athletics. I have been extremely fortunate to have been around four Hall of Fame coaches while an athlete, student, and co-worker. Two are indisputably the best of all time in their sport, Dan Gable (Iowa Wrestling) and Augie Garrido (Cal State Fullerton/ Texas Baseball). Two others are widely recognized as winners, leaders, and trailblazers in Hayden Fry (Iowa/ N Texas/ SMU Football) and Lute Olsen (Arizona/ Iowa Basketball). Today we'll look at Augie Garrido and the lessons I learned in the three years working alongside him.
Augie Garrido is now the winningest coach in the history of College Baseball with 1800 wins and counting. He has won five National Championships, three at CSF and two at UT. He has sent close to 100 players to the big leagues and touched the lives of 1000's more over the last four decades. He brings a swagger to a team, an edge, has incredible charisma, and is a top notch recruiter and evaluator of talent. More importantly, he is just flat out an "it" guy. Could have done anything he wanted to, anytime, anywhere, including managing in MLB numerous times, but he chose College Baseball.
Many stories resonate with me and are not widely known outside of Cal State Fullerton, but should be. They also have alot to do with the way I have approached obstacles in my career and personal life, including my battle with ALS. From 1958-1978, USC Baseball had won ten (10) National Championships. In 1975, they were coming off an unprecedented four (4) consecutive titles as well. CSF was an Orange County based commuter school just transitioning from a very poor Division II baseball program to it's first year in Division 1. Brand new coach Augie Garrido, in his first year with no facilities, a bunch of JUCO castoff players, and a $5000 budget, won a West Regional at USC and kept them from even being able to try and defend in Omaha! That was just the beginning of a legendary run. He gradually built up the program in the years following and ultimately won his first of three CSF National Titles only four years later in 1979. Won again in 1984 and 1995 also. Although he left in 1997 to go to Texas, the Titan program still reigns as a national power.
So how did a 26 year old guy with only two years of prior experience at Division II Cal Poly SLO build Cal State Fullerton from absolutely Ground Zero? How did he take a school with no resources, no tradition, and no money to a perennial Top 10 powerhouse that has stayed relevant even after his departure? Why did four of his former players and former coaches choose to continue the tradition and follow in his footsteps as the Head Coach when they could have easily gone somewhere else where it would be much easier to win along the way?
Attitude.
"Skip" as Augie was widely known, had a saying, "It just doesn't matter." IJDM there was no home facility. IJDM there was no budget. IJDM SC was only 30 miles down the road with all the resources and tradition in the world and CSF would have to go through them every year to get to Omaha.....
What did matter was attitude. Never let himself, his coaches, or his players dwell on what they didn't have.
He sold what he had. Great weather, fertile area for high school baseball prospects that could stay close to home, free education, a chance to play against the heavily recruited blue bloods at SC, Stanford, UCLA, etc. A chance to be on the ground floor of something big, maybe even a chance to maybe play professional baseball someday. By the time I came to Cal State Fullerton in the mid-80's, they had already arrived. The facility was still sub-standard and the budget still shoddy, but it didn't matter. IJDM. The Titans had a swagger and they intimidated everyone they played against before the first pitch was even thrown. The players and coaches to this day still view themselves as the blue collar overachievers. It's them against the world, and the world doesn't stand a chance. They don't win it all every season, but they believe they can win and compete for the title every year.
As an ALS Patient, I have adopted "It just doesn't matter" as my mantra as well. IJDM we have no timetable on how we will progress, IJDM that there is only one barely effective treatment available to patients. IJDM that the Neuros, Hospitals and Clinics after diagnosis can really only help make us comfortable with temporary treatments. IJDM that most people outside our immediate family and close friends are so busy with their own lives that they don't understand or feel our emotional pain. And the list goes on. All of those things are completely out of my control.
Like Augie, we should try to focus on the things we do have and not worry about those things we don't have or cannot control. We have our minds. We have our family. We have our friends. We have other pALS and cALS in the ALS Community, whose willingness to help others is unlike any other group of disease stakeholders in the world. We have many organizations and individuals willing to support us to the extent they can. We have some groundbreaking discoveries beginning to come our way with hope of new advancements for the future. We have some promising Clinical Trials in place and more on the way. And we have today.
Anybody can have a winning attitude if they are playing football today at Alabama or hoops at Duke. Having an ALS diagnosis is kind of like if you were with Fullerton baseball almost 40 years ago, Boise State Football ten years ago when they were playing in the 1-AA Big Sky, or Butler Basketball 15 years ago when they were a perennial loser and it all looked hopeless. What makes all three of these programs winners today? ATTITUDE!
If these programs above had stayed at the same level they were before, they would be the equivalent of Cal Poly Pomona, Northern Arizona, and Youngstown State on today's sports map. But they didn't worry about USC, BYU, or Indiana being in their backyard. They took it day by day, brick by brick, and made themselves something special. Any one of those days on their particular journeys I can promise you it would have been much easier to focus on the negative, listen to the naysayers, and not have tried at all.
Let's not worry about other larger diseases getting much more notoriety. Let's not lose sleep over not having that single national spokesperson that can make us all famous. Let's not worry about what has happened in the past. If we focus on the things we do have and those areas we can control, and make the absolute best of each of them each day, we can make ourselves into something special too. IT'S ALL ABOUT ATTITUDE!
