EDITOR'S NOTE: This is the fourth in a series of profiles on the 2014 Baylor Hall of Fame induction class.

By Jerry Hill
Baylor Bear Insider

Jon Topolski was so far off the recruiting radar that Notre Dame wouldn't even promise him a baseball locker as an invited walk-on.

"As a Catholic kid that was born in northwest Indiana, there's not a lot of deviation," Topolski said. "If you get into Notre Dame, you go. . . . We told them, `I'm already in, we're not looking for any money, we're just looking for an opportunity as an invited walk-on. They just said, `You're more than willing to come try out like everybody else, but we're not going to guarantee you a locker just to come.'''

With that door basically shut, another one opened when then-Baylor assistant coach Mitch Thompson made a routine stop to check out football-baseball signee Mark Cogdill at a tournament in Brenham, Texas.

On the advice of Cogdill's dad, Thompson kept an eye on Cy Creek's 5-foot-9, 160-pound shortstop because "he tries real hard, he runs hard every play, he's got a strong arm and he's pretty quick." It wasn't exactly a ringing endorsement, but at least worth jotting down a couple notes.

Playing shortstop, Topolski made a diving catch in "no-man's land" in foul territory down the left-field line, got up and threw out a runner that had tagged up at third. "Pretty matter-of-factly, Coach Thompson was like, `Well, I don't see a whole lot of high school kids making that play. We don't have to shower Topolski with a whole lot of money to get him to come to school. So, what do we have to lose?''' Topolski said. "That, to be perfectly honest, was my recruitment."

Nineteen years later, Topper - that late recruiting "find" - is being inducted into the Baylor Hall of Fame as the Bears' all-time career leader in hits (333), runs scored (285), triples (25), home runs (50), total bases (574) and walks (185). Along with the rest of the 2014 class, Topolski will be inducted at Friday's Hall of Fame banquet at the Ferrell Center, ride in the Homecoming parade and be honored during Saturday's Baylor-Kansas football game at McLane Stadium.

"Obviously, with daughters as young as mine, they're not going to get the magnitude of the situation," said Topolski, who has a 3-year-old daughter, Whitney, and 1-year-old daughter, Hollis, with his wife, Sarah. "I'm going to be their hero in regards to getting them down on the field. Your kids will find a way to humble you very quickly."

Of course, he had already been humbled by the recruiting process coming out of high school. Lightly recruited by the Stanford baseball coaches, Topolski said "although I was really proud of it, the admissions team at Stanford wasn't all the impressed" with his SAT entrance exam scores.

As part of Baylor baseball coach Steve Smith's first full recruiting class in '95, Topolski felt like he was maybe "good enough and quick enough" to be a pinch-hitter and effective pinch-runner for the Bears.

"Growing up in a football environment, we never played fall baseball and we were only allowed to play summer ball with our high school team," he said. "So, I had never really been exposed to what good baseball looked like. . . . Coming out of high school, I felt like I could be a contributor on the base path. But beyond that, I wasn't sure."

No one could have predicted that Topolski would be the Bears' starting center fielder for four years with a career batting average of .351.

But the most shocking part was his development as a power hitter. From pee-wees and Pony League, and all the way through high school, Topolski had hit one home run "when I was 10 years old, and it was because we were playing on an 8-year-old field." "First, it was coaching, getting a chance to really work at hitting," said Topolski, who helped his power hitting by adding 35 pounds during his four college seasons. "Coach Thompson worked our tails off. And then, we did a lot of self-work. Jimmy Blair, Jeremy Dodson, Eric Nelson and all those guys were religious about hitting in the cage before and after practice."

As a freshman in '96, Topolski called his first collegiate home run a "fence-scraper" against TCU, "and I think the wind was blowing about 50 mph, out."

But the defining moment came the next weekend in a home series against Houston. "We had a sizeable enough lead where there wasn't really any pressure on me," he said. "I got a 2-0 count, and I said, `You know what, I'm just going to come unglued on this pitch. I don't care where it is, I don't care what pitch it is, I'm going to swing as hard as I can.' I think I closed my eyes and swung as hard as I could, and I connected and hit a home run to center field.

"From that point on, I was like, `OK, I can do this. I realized that I could generate enough bat speed to hit a home run. I just need to stop being scared of swinging and missing. If I get a 2-0 count, and I'm feeling good about what I'm seeing, I'm going to freaking come unglued."

Part of a powerful lineup that included hitters like Dodson, Blair, Nelson, Charley Carter and Jason Jennings, Topolski hit .353 with 11 homers and 46 RBI as a sophomore, .344 with a career-high 19 homers as a junior and then capped it by hitting .386 with 17 homers and 68 RBI to earn third-team All-America honors as a senior in 1999.

"I saw these other guys hitting home runs, but I was always more of a slap guy," he said. "I knew my biggest asset was my speed, and I had never really hit the ball all that hard. I was a doubles and triples guy, but it was because I was wheeling it out of home plate."

After back-to-back 32-win seasons his first two years at Baylor, the Bears went 41-20-1 in 1998, finishing second in the Big 12 and upsetting Florida in a regional before bowing out to Illinois, 8-7, in 13 innings.

"I would say internally, we recognized that we probably had a little more talent than what we were given credit for before anybody else did," Topolski said. "I remember my sophomore year, we went to play LSU at the Box. We felt real good going into that, and we realized what big-boy baseball was. To be perfectly honest, it was a good motivating factor, because we just looked at ourselves and looked at them physically, and there was a pretty decent divide."

Drafted in the 31st round by the Florida Marlins after his junior season, Topolski opted to return for his senior season and also got a chance to play for the USA National baseball team that included Jennings as one of the pitchers and Smith as the pitching coach.

"It was a World Cup year, and unfortunately I was part of the roster reduction I think from 25 to 23," Topolski said. "But I got a chance to play with the team in Nicaragua for the qualifying tournament that actually sent them to the Netherlands for the World Cup. It was absolutely amazing. One of my first major recollections of athletics was the 1984 Los Angeles Olympics, so the concept of wearing the red, white and blue had always been a dream. It was a very humbling and amazing experience." Despite some heavy losses at the plate, including Dodson, Blair and Carter, the Bears came back even stronger in 1999. Baylor won a school-record 50 games, finished second in the Big 12, reached the finals of the Big 12 tournament and hosted the Regional and Super Regional tournaments at a under-construction Baylor Ballpark.

"Maybe it's just that naïve confidence shining through, but I felt like we had enough of a core left behind," Topolski said. "You can't replace Charley Carter's .402 with 21 homers and 86 RBI. I think we had six guys who hit more than 15 home runs, so you don't expect to repeat that necessarily. But, we all felt very confident that we were going to win a bunch of games. We were just realistic that we might have to do it a little differently."

After sweeping through the regional and splitting the first two games of the Super Regional with Oklahoma State, the Bears let a late lead slip away in a 6-2 loss to the Cowboys in the deciding third game.

"We obviously caught a little bit off a buzzsaw when we played OSU; they got really, really hot at the right time," Topolski said. "They beat us, and unfortunately we didn't get to go to Omaha, but that team was a lot of fun. We had a lot of fun together."

Drafted in the fourth round by his hometown Houston Astros, Topolski said he had "no preconceived notion of what professional baseball was going to be like." But he got at least a hint of it when he drove over 20 hours from Houston to Auburn, N.Y., and played in a game that night.

"I had just signed my contract. I'm thinking they're going to give me a couple days to get acclimated, maybe I'll get some (batting practice), let me go track some balls down (in the outfield)," he said. "Give me a chance to shake this off. And they're like, `Great. Jon Topolski. You're starting in center field, go grab your glove.''' Starting at short-season Class A ball with Auburn, N.Y., Topolski played six years of pro baseball and got as high as Triple-A New Orleans before hanging it up. Overall, he hit .255 with 53 career home runs, 87 doubles and 32 triples and drove in 273 runs.

"The reality is I probably hung around one season too many," said Topolski, who hit .230 at Double-A Round Rock in his final season. "But I never wanted to be that guy that blamed his coach for not giving him more of a chance. I didn't want to live in the past. When my baseball days were over, I wanted to be able to close the door on that. I wanted to make sure it was 100 percent out of my system."

After returning to graduate, Topper became a financial adviser with UBS in The Woodlands and worked there for three years before joining his father-in-law with the Tulsa-based Vineyard Financial Group and now works out of his home office in Frisco, Texas.

"I work from a home office, so I get to spend a tremendous amount of time with my wife and our girls," he said. "My wife and I have made that choice, conscientiously, to get a chance to spend that kind of time with our girls."

Joining Topolski in the 2014 Hall of Fame class are fellow baseball player Ted Uhlaender, track All-Americans Jeremy Wariner and Yulanda Nelson and football's Adrian Robinson and Richard Stevens.

"Not to slight anyone else, but I'm going in with Jeremy Wariner. That's kind of a big deal," he said. "I'm really looking forward to the longevity of the honor more than the weekend. No one will ever be able to take that away from me. They still honor Ted Lyons posthumously. It's immortal, right? that, to me, is the coolest part of it."