Kelowna’s best baseballer, a pitcher who played for the Toronto Blue Jays for several seasons in the ‘90s, had never been on a diamond until he was 13. 

Growing up in Rutland, Paul Spoljaric’s passion was soccer until a friend invited him to come out to the Edith Gay ballpark and help a team that was short a player. 

“I’d never played baseball before, but I thought I’d give it a try,” Spoljaric recalled Friday. “Almost immediately, I was like, ‘Wow, I really like this game’.”

He hit a homer at one of his first at-bats, sending the ball splashing into a backyard swimming pool. Coaches rotated him at several positions, but it wasn’t until a year or two later when he started pitching and his true skill became apparent. 

Within two years, he was playing at the provincial and national levels. After the Canada Summer Games in Saskatoon in 1989, when Spoljaric was 17, he was offered try-out contracts by the Montreal Expos, Cincinnati Reds, Pittsburgh Pirates, Philadelphia Phillies, and the Blue Jays. He chose the Jays and flew to Toronto to work out at what was then called the Skydome.

Before his first pitch, the catching coach gruffly told him: “Don’t hit me in the knee, kid.”

He didn’t. Spoljaric played several years in the minor leagues before he was added to the Jays’ roster. When he got the call-up, he happened to be back home in Kelowna, working at the old Greyhound bus terminal answering phones and shipping freight. 

“I was dumbfounded,” Spolaric, 55, recalled of his reaction to the call-up. “Everything that up to then that had been a dream was suddenly a possibility.”

Spoljaric, a 6’3” leftie, made his major league debut on April 6, 1994 as the Jays’ starting pitcher against the Chicago White Sox. It was the first season after the Jays had won back-to-back World Series titles, and at the time he was one of only a handful of Canadians in MLB. 

“I think it’s the single greatest achievement in my life to crack that ’94 line-up,” Spolaric said. “It was basically the same line-up in ’94 as it was in ’93. 

“My first time out on the mound, I was so nervous, I could barely feel the rubber under my feet,” he says. 

Spoljaric promptly struck out top hitter Tim Raines and was feeling pretty good about himself. “But things quickly blew up after that,” Spoljaric said with a laugh, recalling, he thinks, that he gave up a walk, a base hit, and a homer before being relieved. “I got my ass, beat, that’s for sure.”

Spoljaric was sent back down to the minors for two years, but he returned to the Jays in ’96, going 2-2 as a starter that year. In ’97 he was traded to the Seattle Mariners, and went on to play for the Phillies before being traded back to Toronto in 1999. He ended his major league career with the Kansas City Royals in 2000.

In all, Spoljaric played six years in MLB, and his record in the pros was 49 wins, 65 losses, with 278 strikeouts. He played for Canada at the 2004 Summer Olympics in Greece, where the baseball team placed fourth. 

He was inducted into the Canadian Baseball Hall of Fame in 2001. 

Through all of his baseball playing years, Spoljaric earned $1.1 million (U.S.) The minimum annual salary now for a major-leaguer is $750,000, and the average annual salary is $5.6 million. 

After Spoljaric’s playing days were over, he got into the construction business and is now president of a flooring company in Bolton, just outside Toronto. His parents still live in Kelowna, and he returns regularly to visit them. 

It’s not surprising who he’s cheering for in the World Series, which starts tonight between the Blue Jays and the Los Angeles Dodgers. 

“The Jays gave me the opportunity, the first signing, the path into baseball,” Spoljaric said. 

But who does he believe will win? “I think the Dodgers are just too big and too strong,” he said. “But I hope with all my heart that I’m wrong.”