Don Taylor was given some wise advice a long time ago by George Thomson, his former baseball coach at Roosevelt Junior High School in Cedar Rapids.

Taylor, 64, was a young coach at the time and he asked Thomson for some advice on what it takes to be successful.

"He told me, if you can teach baseball the way it's meant to be played and teach kids to love the game -- and love the kids you coach -- you'll be successful," Taylor related.

Those sage words helped steer Taylor to a stellar career himself.

Taylor will be inducted into the Iowa High School Baseball Coaches Association Hall of Fame at the IHSBCA awards banquet on Saturday, Jan. 26, at the Sheraton in West Des Moines.

"There are a lot of people in that Hall of Fame that I shouldn't be on the list with," he claimed. "I guess I accept congratulations on behalf of the players and the people who supported baseball where I was at."

Thomson, his former coach at Roosevelt Junior High School and a legendary baseball figure in Cedar Rapids, is a member of the IHSBCA Hall of Fame.

"I don't deserve to be on the same list that he is," said Taylor. "I've been blessed to be around some really talented baseball people."

Taylor spent 30 years as a head baseball coach at Amana (1975-77), WACO (1978), West Branch (1979-2000) and Cedar Rapids Prairie (2006-2009).

Taylor claims he never won a ballgame as a head coach, but says his players won 479 of them. There were also 409 losses.

His teams at West Branch reached the substate finals seven times, back in the days when only four teams reached the state tournament. By today's format, that means all seven of those clubs would have reached the state meet.

One of his teams made the substate finals in the eight-team format, and one of his teams at Amana reached the final four of the fall state tournament.

Taylor played football and baseball at Cedar Rapids Jefferson High School and graduated in 1966. He played football at Northeast Missouri as a freshman and went through spring football practice one year at the University of Northern Iowa. He graduated from UNI in 1973 and began his coaching career as a volunteer assistant at Kennedy in 1974.

"I was pretty sure I'd be a football coach, not a baseball coach," he said.

One of the highlights of his coaching career came during his first season as the head coach at West Branch in 1979. The Bears twice lost to Solon by 10 runs during the regular season, but Taylor was ready for the third meeting when they clashed in the postseason tournament.

He noticed that two of Solon's best players liked to hit the ball up the middle, so he used five infielders in that game and stationed the fifth infielder behind second base. Sure enough, the unusual strategy worked.

"We won the game in nine innings 2-to-1," he recalled. "Of course, my kids went nuts."

Taylor was the head coach in two all-star series. He is a past president of the IHSBCA and serves on the steering committee.

He helped design the criteria for the Lanny Pedersen academic Player of the Year award and also pushed for pitching limitations for Iowa high school pitchers.