Any good news?
- Thread starter okiehorn
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johnnyg88
500+ Posts
Great article in AAS today (long):
Austin celebrated Cliff Gustafson last week, and even the city’s historically snarled traffic didn’t deny him an easy trip down memory lane.
The South San Antonio high school baseball coach, who lied to Darrell Royal in 1968 by saying he was making $500 less than he really was so as not to scare off Texas’ athletic director, eventually accepted the Longhorns job and became the winningest coach in Division I baseball.
Of course, Gus said he was so skeptical when Royal first called, he almost said, “Yeah sure, and this is Roy Rogers.”
More than a half-century later, Gustafson — who attended last Friday’s dinner honoring him as a National College Baseball Hall of Famer with his new wife, Ann — joins Augie Garrido, Rod Dedeaux, Jim Brock and Ron Fraser as the five best coaches in college baseball history, in my opinion.
There were laughs and toasts and even some winces. Brooks Kieschnick reminisced about throwing 172 pitches to beat Oklahoma State in a College World Series game, to which someone in the crowd bellowed, “Is that all?”
Gus wasn’t much on pitch counts or excuses for losing or long hair. But he took baseballs home to stitch them up and pored over his stats and scorebooks and lineups in between nightly bowls of Blue Bell vanilla. He’d hold practices from 1 o’clock until way past dark, and he drilled his teams incessantly on everything from the squeeze bunt to hitting the cutoff man. “It may come up in a game,” he would tell his exhausted players.
He gave his players the take sign almost automatically on 2-0 and 3-1 counts, although that didn’t apply to Keith Moreland. Why?
“I didn’t look (for a sign),” he said.
And Gus won. All the time. An amazing 1,427 times for a .792 winning percentage that still ranks first among Division I coaches. He won with pitching and defense and balk plays and double steals and bases-loaded walks. He won so much that nemesis Gary Ward of Oklahoma State finally told him he knew his secret and showed up with custom boots for the CWS press conference. Gus calmly rolled up his pant legs to show off his boots and said, “Yeah, but Gary do you have your number on yours?”
No. 18 was No. 1 with Texas for a long, long time.
Gus coached when going to Omaha was the standard. He went there 17 times in 29 seasons. He won there twice. Could have won a half-dozen or more. One time he finished second in 1989, his team had no business even being there.
He followed Billy Disch and Bibb Falk and made Texas better.
Texas stood for college baseball and was so revered that ace Kirk Dressendorfer didn’t even list the Longhorns among his top three choices because he didn’t think he was good enough. He still remembers Gus sending the pitchers to left field for conditioning drills, and Dress tagged along with 20 other pitchers. “Gus,” Dress said, “you made me better than I thought I could be.”
“He practiced excellence,” said Kieschnick, one of the best pitcher-hitter combos in school history. “He demanded excellence.”
Texas has never had a better coach. And it should honor him by calling it Disch-Falk Field at Gustafson Park.
Assistant coaches, opposing coaches, umpires and former players, all gushed about Gus and their memories of him a week ago:
• Gene Stephenson, who won 1,837 games, cost Texas a national title when his Wichita State team knocked off a Longhorns team in 1989 that had two great players in Dressendorfer and hitting star Scott Bryant and little else.
“We came here in 1982 for a doubleheader. We never scored a run, and I was so furious,” Stephenson said. “I kept wondering why weren’t we hitting these guys. He threw two weak, little pitchers named Roger Clemens and Calvin Schiraldi.
“He’s the classiest coach I’ve ever been around.”
• Gustafson, who turns 84 next week, never would say his 1975 team that won his first national title was his best. Until the night the Longhorns beat South Carolina and the players got him to admit it. “When (shortstop) Spike Owen played, he was the greatest I ever saw in college,” he said. “And Burt Hooton was the greatest college pitcher I ever saw.”
• The Longhorns were set to play TCU in Fort Worth one day, and Gus, per tradition, hit the hay long before everyone else in the same hotel room.
Long-time assistant coach Bill Bethea and staff stayed up for a few more rounds of 42 before shutting it down.
A war movie on the television punctuated the spirited conversation without interrupting the domino game. During one scene, a group of Navy frogmen swam up to a pier and came across a bomb inscribed with Japanese words.
Pitching coach Clint Thomas squinted at the television and wondered aloud, “What do you think that says?”
A voice broke the silence. From under the covers, Gus said, “Beat Texas.”
• “He taught me the right way to play the game,” Clemens said.
• Gus always had the strictest of policies and a hair code that didn’t exactly fit the times in the late ’60s. Long sideburns were out. Muttonchops were forbidden.
The late James Street was one of the first to test his coach. He didn’t worship Elvis Presley just for his blue suede shoes. Later, burly catcher Bill Berryhill also felt strongly about free expression, particularly when it came to his wavy locks.
One morning, Berryhill arrived at the ballpark and noticed that his uniform wasn’t in his locker. He approached trainer Spanky Stephens, who told them to take it up with Coach.
“I don’t see the relationship between my ability to hit a baseball and the length of my hair,” Berryhill told Gus defiantly.
Responded Gus, “Well, in your case, we’re not going to find out.”
• Freshman catcher Tommy Harmon became the leader on Gus’ first team in 1968 and then a long-time assistant, but his recruitment to Texas pre-Twitter lacked a bit of today’s drama.
During a series with TCU in Fort Worth where Harmon starred for Eastern Hills, Bibb Falk, Gus’ predecessor, saw him at the game and sidled over for a recruiting pitch.
“You want to be a Longhorn?” Falk asked.
“Yes,” Harmon said.
“You are,” Falk said.
• Harmon has an even stronger recollection of a troubled situation years later when taskmaster Texas trainer Frank Medina, who was barely taller than a couple of Louisville Sluggers, approached Gus about a problem player. Medina’s brow was tightly knit.
“I got a player who’s a little bit lazy,” Medina told Gus. “Keith Moreland won’t do anything I’m trying to get him to do. He’s always last in the line. He won’t run. He won’t do anything.”
Medina had the perfect solution: Kick Moreland off the team.
“Frank,” Gus began, “I can find another trainer. I can’t find another All-American third baseman.”
• On blue-chip pitching recruit Richard Wortham’s visit to Texas, Gus wrote on a blackboard in his office the words “Cadillac” and “Ford.”
“I thought, ‘He’s going to give me a Cadillac,’ “ said Wortham, a left-hander who threw a four-hitter to win the 1975 national championship. “Gus asked me which one I’d pick. I’m trying to figure out which car I’m going to get. So Gus said, ‘If you come to Texas, it’s a Cadillac program.’”
Wortham didn’t get a Cadillac, but he got an NCAA-record 50 wins.
• One of Mike Anderson’s proudest moments came when the left fielder played a ball hit off the wall and held the batter to a single. Chest puffed out, he jogged into the dugout at the end of the inning. Gus promptly chewed him out. “You either catch the ball,” Gus said, “or you run through the wall trying to catch it.”
• “You’ve changed our lives, Gus,” star hitter Doug Hodo said. “And we appreciate all you’ve done for all of us.”
Austin celebrated Cliff Gustafson last week, and even the city’s historically snarled traffic didn’t deny him an easy trip down memory lane.
The South San Antonio high school baseball coach, who lied to Darrell Royal in 1968 by saying he was making $500 less than he really was so as not to scare off Texas’ athletic director, eventually accepted the Longhorns job and became the winningest coach in Division I baseball.
Of course, Gus said he was so skeptical when Royal first called, he almost said, “Yeah sure, and this is Roy Rogers.”
More than a half-century later, Gustafson — who attended last Friday’s dinner honoring him as a National College Baseball Hall of Famer with his new wife, Ann — joins Augie Garrido, Rod Dedeaux, Jim Brock and Ron Fraser as the five best coaches in college baseball history, in my opinion.
There were laughs and toasts and even some winces. Brooks Kieschnick reminisced about throwing 172 pitches to beat Oklahoma State in a College World Series game, to which someone in the crowd bellowed, “Is that all?”
Gus wasn’t much on pitch counts or excuses for losing or long hair. But he took baseballs home to stitch them up and pored over his stats and scorebooks and lineups in between nightly bowls of Blue Bell vanilla. He’d hold practices from 1 o’clock until way past dark, and he drilled his teams incessantly on everything from the squeeze bunt to hitting the cutoff man. “It may come up in a game,” he would tell his exhausted players.
He gave his players the take sign almost automatically on 2-0 and 3-1 counts, although that didn’t apply to Keith Moreland. Why?
“I didn’t look (for a sign),” he said.
And Gus won. All the time. An amazing 1,427 times for a .792 winning percentage that still ranks first among Division I coaches. He won with pitching and defense and balk plays and double steals and bases-loaded walks. He won so much that nemesis Gary Ward of Oklahoma State finally told him he knew his secret and showed up with custom boots for the CWS press conference. Gus calmly rolled up his pant legs to show off his boots and said, “Yeah, but Gary do you have your number on yours?”
No. 18 was No. 1 with Texas for a long, long time.
Gus coached when going to Omaha was the standard. He went there 17 times in 29 seasons. He won there twice. Could have won a half-dozen or more. One time he finished second in 1989, his team had no business even being there.
He followed Billy Disch and Bibb Falk and made Texas better.
Texas stood for college baseball and was so revered that ace Kirk Dressendorfer didn’t even list the Longhorns among his top three choices because he didn’t think he was good enough. He still remembers Gus sending the pitchers to left field for conditioning drills, and Dress tagged along with 20 other pitchers. “Gus,” Dress said, “you made me better than I thought I could be.”
“He practiced excellence,” said Kieschnick, one of the best pitcher-hitter combos in school history. “He demanded excellence.”
Texas has never had a better coach. And it should honor him by calling it Disch-Falk Field at Gustafson Park.
Assistant coaches, opposing coaches, umpires and former players, all gushed about Gus and their memories of him a week ago:
• Gene Stephenson, who won 1,837 games, cost Texas a national title when his Wichita State team knocked off a Longhorns team in 1989 that had two great players in Dressendorfer and hitting star Scott Bryant and little else.
“We came here in 1982 for a doubleheader. We never scored a run, and I was so furious,” Stephenson said. “I kept wondering why weren’t we hitting these guys. He threw two weak, little pitchers named Roger Clemens and Calvin Schiraldi.
“He’s the classiest coach I’ve ever been around.”
• Gustafson, who turns 84 next week, never would say his 1975 team that won his first national title was his best. Until the night the Longhorns beat South Carolina and the players got him to admit it. “When (shortstop) Spike Owen played, he was the greatest I ever saw in college,” he said. “And Burt Hooton was the greatest college pitcher I ever saw.”
• The Longhorns were set to play TCU in Fort Worth one day, and Gus, per tradition, hit the hay long before everyone else in the same hotel room.
Long-time assistant coach Bill Bethea and staff stayed up for a few more rounds of 42 before shutting it down.
A war movie on the television punctuated the spirited conversation without interrupting the domino game. During one scene, a group of Navy frogmen swam up to a pier and came across a bomb inscribed with Japanese words.
Pitching coach Clint Thomas squinted at the television and wondered aloud, “What do you think that says?”
A voice broke the silence. From under the covers, Gus said, “Beat Texas.”
• “He taught me the right way to play the game,” Clemens said.
• Gus always had the strictest of policies and a hair code that didn’t exactly fit the times in the late ’60s. Long sideburns were out. Muttonchops were forbidden.
The late James Street was one of the first to test his coach. He didn’t worship Elvis Presley just for his blue suede shoes. Later, burly catcher Bill Berryhill also felt strongly about free expression, particularly when it came to his wavy locks.
One morning, Berryhill arrived at the ballpark and noticed that his uniform wasn’t in his locker. He approached trainer Spanky Stephens, who told them to take it up with Coach.
“I don’t see the relationship between my ability to hit a baseball and the length of my hair,” Berryhill told Gus defiantly.
Responded Gus, “Well, in your case, we’re not going to find out.”
• Freshman catcher Tommy Harmon became the leader on Gus’ first team in 1968 and then a long-time assistant, but his recruitment to Texas pre-Twitter lacked a bit of today’s drama.
During a series with TCU in Fort Worth where Harmon starred for Eastern Hills, Bibb Falk, Gus’ predecessor, saw him at the game and sidled over for a recruiting pitch.
“You want to be a Longhorn?” Falk asked.
“Yes,” Harmon said.
“You are,” Falk said.
• Harmon has an even stronger recollection of a troubled situation years later when taskmaster Texas trainer Frank Medina, who was barely taller than a couple of Louisville Sluggers, approached Gus about a problem player. Medina’s brow was tightly knit.
“I got a player who’s a little bit lazy,” Medina told Gus. “Keith Moreland won’t do anything I’m trying to get him to do. He’s always last in the line. He won’t run. He won’t do anything.”
Medina had the perfect solution: Kick Moreland off the team.
“Frank,” Gus began, “I can find another trainer. I can’t find another All-American third baseman.”
• On blue-chip pitching recruit Richard Wortham’s visit to Texas, Gus wrote on a blackboard in his office the words “Cadillac” and “Ford.”
“I thought, ‘He’s going to give me a Cadillac,’ “ said Wortham, a left-hander who threw a four-hitter to win the 1975 national championship. “Gus asked me which one I’d pick. I’m trying to figure out which car I’m going to get. So Gus said, ‘If you come to Texas, it’s a Cadillac program.’”
Wortham didn’t get a Cadillac, but he got an NCAA-record 50 wins.
• One of Mike Anderson’s proudest moments came when the left fielder played a ball hit off the wall and held the batter to a single. Chest puffed out, he jogged into the dugout at the end of the inning. Gus promptly chewed him out. “You either catch the ball,” Gus said, “or you run through the wall trying to catch it.”
• “You’ve changed our lives, Gus,” star hitter Doug Hodo said. “And we appreciate all you’ve done for all of us.”
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