
Originally Posted by
laszagas
I don't post often, but thought this thread was appropriate to dedicate the Final 4 to my Grandpa - Richard "Dick" Busch. He was an engineering professor at Gonzaga as well as the head baseball coach at Gonzaga from 1945-1966. He moved the baseball team to the Big Sky Conference and even won a conference championship and coach of the year in 1965. He passed away about 10 years ago.
Understandably, he was a HUGE Gonzaga basketball fan and when he retired in the 80s, the school gave him two basketball tickets for the rest of his and his wife's life (my grandma is 94 and she still get's 2 tix to every home game - can you believe the luck!) I started going to games with him when I was just 5 or 6 years old and sit right behind the GU bench and marvel at Fitz screaming and yelling in the huddles. I continued going to several games a year with him even while I was at G-Prep in the 90s. I know he's smiling down from heaven watching his beloved Bulldogs go to their first ever Final 4 (but not last!!!)
I remember your grandpa from when I was a neighborhood urchin exploring around the campus and sitting along the first base line at Mulligan Field waiting for a broken bat. I think it might have been him that "caught" a couple of us messing around with the Link trainer a holdover from WW2 that was in Dillon Hall. I also remember the ever present pipe and his last year as GU Coach which was my first Spring as a student.
Birddog
Twas brillig, and the slithy toves
Did gyre and gimble in the wabe:
All mimsy were the borogoves,
And the mome raths outgrabe.