AUBURN — Thinking ahead has always served Louis Talarico III well, in the investment business and in sports.

Talarico’s ability to analyze any given situation is what made him an outstanding baseball and football player at Edward Little and a Division I two-sport athlete at Boston College in the late 1980s-early 1990s. When combined with some deceptive speed and rare leadership skills, his cerebral approach made him a member of the Auburn-Lewiston Sports Hall of Fame’s Class of 2012

The funny thing is, the perceptive and self-deprecating Talarico never saw his selection coming. He’s been a bit perplexed ever since his mother, Judith Johnson, informed him a month ago.

“It came as a complete shock to me,” said Talarico, who also lettered in basketball for two years at EL. “I was surprised and continue to be surprised, and somewhat concerned that I live up to the standards because I’ve certainly seen some of the names that are in there. There are certainly a lot of my teammates who belong and are probably more deserving than I am.”

According to the men who coached him for three years in baseball and football, Talarico should know better.

“He was very intelligent and extremely versatile,” said Mike Haley, Talarico’s football coach. “He was one of those guys who you tell him once and he’s got it. That made it very possible to play several positions and do it very well.”

“It’s well-deserved. He’s a smart guy. He obviously has some brains and used them in all the sports,” said Bruce Lucas, who coached Edward Little and New Auburn Legion to state championships when Talarico played. “He was a very aggressive player, and he was definitely a spark plug.”

Talarico was a spark plug as a right fielder and leadoff hitter on Lucas’ first Class A state championship team in 1989, his junior year. The team was stacked with future college players, including Mark Ballard and Verne Paradie.

“That baseball team, really throughout my life, really stands out,” he said. “This is a group of baseball players that won Little League state championships every year and then went on and had tremendous success at Walton (as freshmen) and then moved right on to Edward Little and won a state championship in our junior year. It was such a competitive group. You got better playing against them in Little League and then playing with them in school.”

Talarico points to Lucas, who now lives in Hamilton, Mass., and is a volunteer baseball coach at Hamilton-Wenham High School, as one of his biggest influences, on and off the field.

“He was a great coach and a great friend throughout high school,” Talarico said. “He was a mentor to me growing up.”

Putting the squeeze on

Talarico moved to center field for his senior year as the Eddies, with most of their talent returning, expected to defend their title.

But they didn’t make it to the regional championship that spring. Fueled by that disappointment, they steamrolled through the American Legion season, finishing 29-2 and upending Augusta in the state final thanks to Talarico’s cunning.

Talarico’s mind was always on the game, and the gears were turning in a crucial spot late in the championship game against Augusta. Trailing 3-2 in the eighth inning, New Auburn put runners on the corners with no one out. In the on-deck circle, Talarico proposed a squeeze play to Lucas, figuring the speedy Paradie could score from third easily as long as he put the ball in play.

But once Ryan Turner drove Paradie home with the tying run and sent the more plodding Ballard to third, Talarico figured the play was off. As Augusta made a pitching change, third base coach Bill Reynolds checked with Lucas, who gave him the nod to keep the play on.

“I knew if Louis had an idea of putting a ball down, he would put it down, one way or the other,” Lucas said.

Talarico did get it down, down the first base line. He was tagged out, but not before Ballard crossed the plate with what would prove to be the winning run.

“It had a heck of a lot of spin on it,” Talarico said. “The first baseman bailed me out and fielded it. I think it had a chance to go foul.”

The title was redemption for the Edward Little players and personal redemption for Talarico.

“That was a pretty good feeling,” he said. “It was certainly a good ending to a frustrating tournament for me. I was struggling a little bit in that tournament at the plate and got dropped down in the order as a result. I was lacking a bit of confidence.”

Talarico wasn’t lacking in confidence when he decided to try out for baseball at Boston College as a walk-on. He made the team his sophomore year and worked his way up to starting catcher.

While the Eagles struggled in the Big East during his two-years on the squad, Talarico enjoyed his time there. He even got a taste of the big leagues when he started behind the plate in the inaugural BC/Boston Red Sox  exhibition game, which has since become a spring training tradition.

Gaining insight on the gridiron

Talarico had his greatest success in baseball, but football was his favorite sport. A three-year letterman at Edward Little, he played multiple backfield positions on both sides of the ball. He was an all-state defensive back and called signals for the defense. He was also briefly on offense as the quarterback before Haley decided his versatility could be of better use at multiple other positions.

“We moved him around our defensive and offensive backfields because we could do a lot of different things with him,” Haley said. “It was fun having a guy like that. He had a great feel for the game, great insight.”

Talarico gained some great insight into the game when he made BC’s football team as a walk-on his freshman year. He decided his skills were better suited for baseball after one year, but that lone season on the gridiron was spent under head coach Tom Coughlin, who would go on to lead the New York Giants to two Super Bowl titles, and defensive backs coach Randy Edsall, now the head coach at the University of Maryland.

“That was actually a great learning experience,” Talarico said. “I was playing for some world-class coaches there. Even now I think back to practices with those guys and film study. I tell you what, if there’s ever a place you learn attention to detail and what it really means to prepare, those guys taught you.”

He found those preparation skills handy when, after earning his bachelors degree in math and economics, he went to work on Wall Street.

He had two offers when he picked up his degree. One was to work for Fidelity Investments. The other was to follow his roommate on the baseball team, Pete Carmichael Jr., as a graduate assistant football coach at the University of New Hampshire.

Carmichael became the offensive coordinator of the New Orleans Saints in 2009. Talarico may not want anything to do with that hornet’s nest now, but he can’t help but consider what could have happened if he’d decided to become a coach.

He went the business route instead and got his business degree at the University of Virginia. He worked for JP Morgan and Goldman Sachs, then started his own investment firm in 2009, Lct Capital LLC, in New York City. A little over a year ago, he took that business and his family, including his two sons, four-year-old Jack and two-year-old Henry, to Austin, TX.

Talarico inherited his athletic genes from his father, Louis, Jr., who was a teammate of fellow inductee John Tewhey at Lewiston, and his grandmother, Virginia Johnson, one of the pioneering female athletes at Edward Little in the 1930s. He grew up near Lost Valley and next door to the Parisien family and A-L Hall of Famer Julie Parisien.

He’ll be back in the old neighborhood for Sunday’s induction banquet at Lost Valley.Typically, Talarico credits others for his spot at the head table.

“For me, this is more about my coaches and my teams,” he said. “I never would have accomplished anything had it not been for them.”