The legacy of a great coach can be defined by a few things. Some choose to analyze their list of accomplishments. Others pay closer attention to how well-respected that person was by their players and peers.
No matter how people choose to define Stan Taloff Jr.’s coaching legacy, the only logical conclusion is his career was a great success.
Taloff, who was a head baseball coach for 38 years including the past eight years at Archbishop Murphy High School, recently announced his retirement from coaching. The 68-year-old Hall of Fame coach leaves the game with 587 career victories, 533 of which came at the high school level, 19 state playoff appearances and one state championship, which came with the Wildcats in 2012 — the same year he picked up his 500th career coaching victory.
Rightfully so, Taloff is proud of all his accolades, but what seems to bring him the most pride is the relationship he’s built with his players over the years.
“I think all relationships that you develop wherever you’re at are extremely important, but the ones that have that same aspiration that you had when you were younger — you relate to it,” Taloff said. “I always want to believe that you develop winners and winning takes care of itself, because winners has to do with people and winning has to do with something that happens on the scoreboard.”
If there is one message Taloff has always tried to get across to his players, it’s from a quote he has repeated many times over the years.
“To win the game is great, to play the game is greater, to love the game is the greatest.”
Taloff has loved the game and the game has loved him back.
That made his decision to retire all the more difficult.
“Baseball has been part of my life since I was 5-years-old,” Taloff said. “It’s been my mainstay. Other than the Lord, my wife and my family, baseball has absorbed me in everything. It gave me my full (college) education (at Seattle University) without needing to pay a penny and then it’s come back and paid me dividends in so many ways and it’s been so good to me that yes, it was very difficult.”
Some of Taloff’s final years in coaching were his most successful. In eight seasons at Archbishop Murphy, Taloff led the Wildcats to seven league championships.
In 2012, his team gave him a season he’ll never forget. He picked up his 500th career win midway through the season against Lakewood. Later that season, the Wildcats defeated Lynden 7-6 in eight innings to win the 2A state championship, giving Taloff has first ever state title as a head coach after three second-place finishes earlier in his career — one at Shorecrest and two at Cedar Park Christian.
“The 500 wins is kind of a personal thing,” Taloff said. “The thing that made it so good was that group of guys made a big deal about it as far as players go. You never know these days if the players can really get outside of themselves and support their coach that way. To go on and win the state title in the way that we did was part of the capper. But the real capper was that my first grandson was born in that year too.
“That was a fantastic year in my life.”
One of the players that was key to the Wildcats’ state championship season was senior pitcher Levi MaVorhis, who Taloff maintains a close relationship with today. MaVorhis was the winning pitcher in the Wildcats’ state semifinal win over East Valley of Yakima and delivered five RBI in the championship victory over the Lions.
MaVorhis, who currently pitches for a minor league affiliate of the St. Louis Cardinals in Tennessee, said winning for Taloff was important for he and his teammates.
“I think for anybody that was ever coached by Coach Taloff, they would do anything for that man,” MaVorhis said. “We knew that hadn’t won a state championship. He’d been to the state championship game, but he hadn’t won it yet. I would’ve done anything to get him that trophy and get him that ring. Just the fact that I could be there for that year was a privilege and I couldn’t really put into words how excited I was to get that for him because he more than deserved it.”
It was Taloff’s only state championship as a coach, but 34 years of former players shared in the celebration.
“We were so glad that coach got that title because he deserved it many times previously to that,” said Jeff Smith, who played for Taloff at Shoreline High School from 1981 to 1984. “The game of baseball is one that the ball rolls in different directions. It’s hard to put that many wins together to win the title. In our minds, he’s the best high school coach that there has ever been in the state of Washington and that means he needed a state championship.”
The Wildcats led Lynden 3-0 early, but had to come from behind twice in the late innings to win the game. It was a fitting finish for a coach that had always taught his players to be in the moment.
“What made coach special in playoff games is he had drilled it in to you that you played every inning for that inning, no matter what the previous score was,” Smith said. “Because of that, it always gave you a chance to come back and it always kept you from being too high when things were going well.”
Taloff’s first state championship appearance as a head coach came in 1993 at Shorecrest, which was led by Glendon Rusch, a former major league pitcher who is one of the best players Taloff ever coached.
“I always think of the run we made as a team and how we all believed in him, which made us believe that much more in ourselves,” Rusch said. “In 1993, I would say we weren’t the most talented team in the state, but making it to the state title game is a true testament of what he was able to do as a coach.”
His players loved him and opposing coaches respected him. While coaching at Shorecrest in the 1990s, Taloff had some epic battles with former Lake Stevens’ head coach Rodger Anderson, who also retired from coaching earlier this year.
Anderson recalled watching Taloff while the Vikings took batting practice prior to facing Shorecrest.
“Back in those days we would take batting practice before a game out on the field,” Anderson said. “He would kind of squat down and hide in the corner of the dugout and watch the opposing team. He watched every single hitter. He could tell by their seven or eight cuts in batting practice before a game. He’d watch them and get a scouting report on the opposing team. I always remember thinking, ‘That sly little fox. He’s getting everything he can on us.’”
Another of Taloff’s greatest coaching memories came in 1995 when Shorecrest faced Anderson’s Vikings in the district championship. Lake Stevens came into the game ranked No. 1 in the state and Anderson called it “probably the most talented team I’ve ever coached.”
Taloff started a slow-throwing lefty on the mound who somehow got the Vikings’ hitters out of sorts and Shorecrest went on to win the game.
“It was the perfect guy to throw against our guys,” Anderson said. “A soft-thrower to keep our guys off balance. That’s typical Stan. No disrespect to anyone I’ve ever coached against, but I would say he’s the smartest baseball coach that I’ve ever competed against.”
There was a time when Taloff said his wife, Katie, would have trouble talking to her husband on game days, but his approach changed as the years went on.
“For being able to do what I love to do, which is coach and be around baseball and be around young men, there had to be a seasoning for me also to realize that things were different,” Taloff said. “I would say that I’ve calmed down quite a bit. Inside of me there is still a grit, but being able to handle today’s athletes is quite a bit different than back in the 80s.”
His approach may have changed, but the message never stopped getting through to his players.
“He’s got so much to offer that any time you need to talk to him or need advice on anything, he’s one of the first people I call,” MaVorhis said. “He’s remained a close part of my life and I’ll forever look up to him.”
It wasn’t just his own players that Taloff cared about.
“He’s a class-act as a coach,” Granite Falls head coach Doug Engstrom said. “He’s very polite and he’s respectful of both teams on and off the field. He comes out and knows the other kids names from the opposing teams.
“He’s just a very good guy.”
Anderson echoed that sentiment.
“He cared for his players and he cared for players on the other teams,” he said. “I learned a lot just by talking to a lot of his former players. He really cared and he taught his players how to play the game correctly and how to respect the game. Any time that I’ve ever seen him coach that we’ve played against him, we’d look at our players and say, ‘We want to be like those guys. We want to play the game right.’ And that was every year that I’ve ever coached against him.”
Always humble, Taloff gives the credit for all of his successes to his players.
“I haven’t pitched a ball in a long time and I haven’t swung that bat in any one of these wins, so the credit really goes to the players that actually bought in and did what had to be done in order for us to be successful from year to year,” he said.
Taloff might be shy about taking any of the credit, but his former players are more than willing to make up for that.
“I am so proud to have played for him and been a small slice of the huge career he’s had,” Rusch said. “(I) want to say a huge thanks for everything he’s taught me and congrats to him.”
Aaron Lommers covers prep sports for The Herald. Follow him on Twitter at @aaronlommers and contact him at alommers@heraldnet.com.
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