To the majority of the sports world, the face of the Toronto Maple Leafs is Auston Matthews, the budding NHL superstar.
But in baseball circles, when winter turns to summer, the face of the Toronto Maple Leafs is North Bay’s Damon Topolie.
The longtime catcher/first baseman is in his 19th season with the Intercounty Baseball League’s Maple Leafs. In 2013, Topolie added the role of field manager, all the while continuing to swing the bat as he works his way up the league’s all-time hit board.
The eight-team Intercounty loop is Ontario’s top senior amateur league, featuring mostly current and former collegiate players and a handful of ex-pros playing a 36-game schedule. The league has been around for 99 years and Topolie, who made his debut with the Maple Leafs in 1999, is one of four players in league history to surpass 700 career hits. Before he puts away his bat for good, the 41-year-old would like to work his way onto the podium with current Kitchener Panthers slugger Sean Reilly (800-plus hits and counting) and longtime Guelph Royal Kevin Hinton (791 hits). Topolie is a couple dozen hits behind Arden Eddie (765) for third all-time.
Topolie, an eight-time IBL All-Star and 2002 Playoff MVP, didn’t take an at-bat until the 13th game this season, preferring to get some of his younger players plate appearances as the team starts coming together. (He made his season debut at the plate on Wednesday and is 3-for-8 after two games). He’ll get some more at-bats as the schedule picks up (Topolie hit .351 in 77 at-bats last summer as a 40-year-old) but the short-term focus is on building off last year’s appearance in the league final, where the Leafs fell to the Barrie Baycats.
The Chippewa Secondary School graduate has been part of Maple Leaf IBL championship teams in 1999, 2002 and 2007 and wants to add another as the club’s skipper.
“We’re right where we need to be,” Topolie said prior to a recent road win over the Burlington Herd. “I have a lot of new guys this season, a lot of young guys, so we’re trying to get settled and figure out where some of the guys are going to fit. I’m not too worried about the games in May and June – it’s the games getting closer to playoffs in late July when we’ll have a set lineup and so forth.”
It can be a challenge balancing a player-manager role, but Topolie is getting more comfortable being in charge.
“It gets easier each year,” he said. “ It’s not quite autopilot, but I’m getting into that routine as a manager now, not so much as a player, figuring out lineups and situations and just strategizing the game of baseball.”
Suiting up with a new generation of players – some are half his age – and helping them break into the league can be demanding, but the adjustment has been gradual. The teammates may be getting younger, but Topolie has donned the same Maple Leafs uniform since 1999, so he has plenty of experience to lean on, including suiting up with former major leaguers like Paul Spoljaric, Pete Orr and brothers Rob and Rich Butler.
“It’s definitely a learning experience,” he said. “I’m a combination of old-school and new. With millennials, they can be different in trying to get a grasp on. That’s the biggest learning curve – it’s not so much the game of baseball, it’s learning the players of this generation and how to work with them.
“Baseball a lot of times is about giving back. You got to a certain point because of a certain somebody and I’m a bit of everybody I’ve ever played with or for and I try to use that with the guys I’m coaching.”
As his managing role evolves, Topolie has a couple of key mentors with strong North Bay roots to lean on. The Maple Leafs have been owned for 49 years by North Bay native Jack Dominico, with whom Topolie shares a strong relationship.
“He’s been a mentor and a guide all my life,” Topolie said of Dominico, who is now 78 and still a regular for Sunday afternoon games at Dominico Field at Christie Pits.
And when Topolie is in the third-base coaching box directing traffic, he can glance across the diamond to first base to see his father, Peter, a longtime North Bay baseball and basketball coach and educator.
Peter Topolie was brought on last summer as the Maple Leafs’ first-base coach and is a steadying presence in the dugout filling out lineup cards, scouting the opposition and sharing years of experience. Peter was instrumental in helping Damon and friends learn the game on the diamonds of North Bay in the 1980s and ‘90s, getting involved in provincial and national events, before Damon ventured off to Tusculum College in Tennessee in the mid-1990s.
“It’s pretty cool,” Damon said of wearing the same Toronto Maple Leafs uniform as his father. “I’m on the back end of my career and I’m right back where I started with my Dad on the bench. He’s actually quite familiar with a lot of the guys on the team because when he was coaching with the Ontario Blue Jays, he was coaching a lot of these kids. It’s full circle.
“I didn’t bring him on because he was my Dad – I brought him on because he’s a good baseball coach and he knows these guys. He knows the game and these guys are comfortable around him.”
Peter Topolie has overcome some health issues the last few years, making suiting up and enjoying the game under the sun that much more pleasurable. He’s even run the bench a few games when Damon has been away with young family responsibilities with his wife, Rosalie.
“This is so much fun,” Peter said. “If you love baseball, there’s no better place to be.”
The Leafs are off to a 6-8 start, good for fourth place in mid-June, but the experience of the extended 2016 playoff run should help as they build toward the stretch run and prepare for the post-season.
“I have three championship rings and all I can tell the players is how we did it and how awesome it feels and the brotherhood and the family you become after you win a championship,” Topolie said. “You’ll never forget those memories, so that’s what we’re trying to build.”
