Bone Daddy’s bar and restaurant, Madison Square Garden, The Sports Place at 302 E. 6th Street in Austin, Texas was located next door to Slim’s Barber Shop at 304 E. 6h St…..where University of Texas head baseball coach Cliff Gustafson would get his “weekly trim” and then come to The Garden for an MSG Special….which was one of the best double meat, double cheese, double bacon hamburgers in town which was served with tater tots and cream gravy….as each time Coach Gus would show up, he would as Bone Daddy to put on a Texas baseball cassette recording…..so he could watch his Texas Longhorns play baseball on the big screen. Bone Daddy says that Coach Gus was as genuine as any person he had ever met…who just loved to talk baseball.
Cliff Gustafson is a former Texas high school and college baseball coach….who was head coach of the University of Texas baseball team for twenty-nine seasons. Coach Gus was born February 12, 1931 in Kenedy, Texas…..who then played baseball at UT in a college career that included the 1952 team that won the Southwest Conference championship and reached the College World Series. Gustafson posted a .308 batting average for his collegiate career…. and went on to briefly play professional baseball….after which he coached at South San Antonio High School for fourteen seasons….where he won seven Texas State championships….for Coach Gus was already a legend in Texas baseball when he got a call from UT.
In 1968, after hanging up initially on University of Texas football coach and athletic director, Darrell Royal….who was already a legend in college football in the best football state in America….back in the day and now in 2018….cuz Coach Gus thought it was a prank phone call….but when all was said and done….Coach Gus took a pay cut to coach the baseball team at The University of Texas at Austin. While there, he led the Longhorns to a record twenty-two Southwest Conference Championships…. a record seventeen College World Series appearances…and two national championships in baseball in 1975 and 1983.
Many of Gustafson’s players went on to play Major League Baseball including Jim Acker, Billy Bates, Mike Brumley, Mike Capel, Roger Clemens, Dennis Cook, Scott Coolbaugh, Keith Creel, Kirk Dressendorfer, Ron Gardenhire, Jim Gideon, Jerry Don Gleaton, Burt Hooton, Bob Kearney, Brooks Kieschnick, Keith Moreland, Calvin Murray, Spike Owen, Karl Pagel, Mark Petkovsek, Shane Reynolds, Andre Robertson, Bruce Ruffin, Calvin Schiraldi, J.D. Smart, Greg Swindell, Jose Tolentino, Richard Wortham, and Ricky Wright…..for Bone Daddy knew many of these guys since they all played during the heyday of MSG….as The Sports Place would fill up every time each of them played in the College World Series…..and they all played during the reign of MSG being the dominant sports bar in Austin during their college careers.
Coach Gustafson has been inducted into the University of Texas Hall of Honor, American Baseball Coaches Association Hall of Fame and the Texas Sports Hall of Fame. He was named National Coach of the Year in baseball in 1982 and 1983….and was also named an inaugural member of National Baseball Hall of Fame in 2006….and we value every “nugget of gold” that we have of Coach Gus and his Texas Longhorns baseball teams in our treasure chest of vintage memories.
