MORGANTOWN, W.Va. – One of the greatest pure hitters in West Virginia University baseball history likely played his final game at Kendrick Family Ballpark on Sunday.
 
He's JJ Wetherholt, of course, who has recovered nicely from a hamstring injury that kept him out of the entire month of March. Wetherholt smacked a three-run homer and drove in four runs in West Virginia's 12-5 victory over Kansas State yesterday to boost the Mountaineers' overall record to 31-19.
 
"From the time we recruited him, he was just a little kid from Pittsburgh who had some ability, and then to see what he's developed into, he's a once-in-a-lifetime kind of player," retiring West Virginia coach Randy Mazey said Sunday. "It's just an honor to say he and I shared our last year here together."
 
The 5-foot-10, 190-pound junior is coming alive at the right time of the year with 10 hits in his last 18 at bats, including three home runs and eight RBIs, to boost his season average to .384. The Mars, Pennsylvania, resident now shows a .382 batting mark in 135 career games with 27 home runs, 79 extra base hits and 125 runs batted in.
 
That compares favorably to some of the best hitters in school history.
 
The great Ira "Errett" Rodgers, a football All-American and a three-sport star, batted .360 in 73 career games while playing shortstop for the Mountaineers in 1916, 1917, 1918 and 1919. Rodgers' best season came in 1917 when he hit .431 in 16 games with 10 extra base hits.
 
Philadelphia Athletics owner Connie Mack coveted Rodgers as a baseball player, but Rodgers spurned Mack's offer to remain at WVU to become a professor and coach.
 
Two decades later, Mack was able to sign Mountaineer first baseman Herbert "Babe" Barna to a contract following his senior season in 1937, and Barna was immediately promoted to the majors.
 
Barna batted .407 in 58 career games for the Mountaineers, including a career-best .467 in 1935. The Anmoore native smacked seven home runs, drove in 55 and had 27 extra base hits in those 58 appearances. Later, while playing for the Nashville Vols of the Southern Association in 1949, Barna led the minors with 42 home runs and 125 RBIs while batting .341 in 148 games. 
 
He was also a standout football player who once caught a school-record three touchdown passes in a game against Cincinnati, while also excelling on the hardwood as a center. Philadelphia Eagles owner Bert Bell pursued Barna as an end, but Barna declined Bell's contract offer because he didn't want to risk an injury and damage his baseball fortunes.
 
He played parts of five Major League seasons with the Athletics and Giants.
 
In 1960, Flemington's Paul Popovich was WVU's only "bonus baby" during the pre-draft era, the second baseman signing a $42,000 contract with the Chicago Cubs following his lone season playing for the Mountaineers.
 
Popovich declined a $12,000 offer from the Cleveland Indians after his senior season at Flemington High to sign a scholarship to play for Fred Schaus' nationally ranked Mountaineer basketball team.
 
Popovich played freshman basketball and then was a starting infielder for Steve Harrick's Mountaineer baseball team during the spring of 1960, when he hit a Southern Conference-best .426 with four home runs, 25 RBIs and 13 extra base hits in 26 games.
 
Just like Wetherholt, Popovich had impressive power for someone of a slight build standing just 6 feet and weighing 170 pounds. His four home runs were more than the three the entire Mountaineer team hit in 1959 at cavernous Hawley Field, then situated along Monongahela Boulevard.
 
Popovich was considered the Cubs' No. 2 national prospect the year he signed, and he was immediately assigned to Double-A San Antonio. Taking Popovich's spot on the Little Pirates, a well-known summer baseball team in Pittsburgh, was Glenn Beckert, who later jumped Popovich in the Cubs organization to become Chicago's starting second baseman following the sudden death of Ken Hubbs in 1964.
 
The next elite WVU hitter to come along was Front Royal, Virginia, native Darrell Whitmore, a Mountaineer football performer whose interest eventually turned to the baseball diamond when professional scouts took an interest in his hitting.
 
Whitmore batted .407 in 26 games during his sophomore season in 1989 and then hit .386 with 10 home runs and 54 RBIs in a full season in 1990. Whitmore batted .392 in 71 career games with 11 home runs, 72 RBIs and 32 extra base hits.
 
Late Mountaineer coach Dale Ramsburg remembered observing with amazement one of Whitmore's early at bats when he went from being completely fooled on the first pitch, to fouling off the second, to drilling a line drive over the pitcher's head on the third offering. Ramsburg indicated that Whitmore's ability to adjust within one at bat was among the quickest he had ever seen.
 
Whitmore played parts of three seasons with the Florida Marlins in 1993, 1994 and 1995.
 
Charleston's Mark Landers was a tremendous college hitter, particularly his two final seasons in 1993 and 1994, when he slugged 29 home runs over those two campaigns and batted .416 with 81 RBIs as a senior, but his kryptonite was usually left-handed pitching.
 
The first baseman did earn All-America honors in 1994.
 
Morgantown's Jedd Gyorko, who spent three seasons at West Virginia in 2008, 2009 and 2010, punished Big East pitching to the tune of a .404 batting average in 168 career games.
 
Gyorko batted a career-best .421 as a sophomore in 2009, and then doubled his home run total from eight as a sophomore to 19 as a junior when he batted .381 with 57 RBIs and 48 extra-base hits. Gyorko made Baseball America's All-America third team and was the Brooks Wallace Award winner as college baseball's top shortstop in 2010.
 
Protecting Gyorko in the lineup for two of those seasons was Coatesville, Pennsylvania, resident Vince Belnome, who batted .377 as a sophomore in 2008 and .418 as a junior in 2009. Belnome's career numbers included a .388 average with 174 RBIs and 70 extra base hits, making Gyorko and Belnome perhaps the best one-two hitting combination in school history.
 
Gyorko was a sandwich pick of the San Diego Padres in the second round of the Major League Draft and spent eight seasons in the majors with the San Diego Padres, St, Louis Cardinals and Los Angeles Dodgers. His best season in the bigs came in 2016 when he hit 30 home runs and batted .243.
 
Other great Mountaineer hitters through the years include Wheeling's Herb Stewart, whose school-record .474 career average came in 171 plate appearances during the 1933, 1934 and 1935 seasons, Triadelphia's Eddie Vacherese, who batted .408 over three years in 1927, 1928 and 1929, and Ashland, Kentucky, third baseman Steve Rolen, a .380 batter in 145 career contests from 1986-89.
 
As for ranking the best of the best, it's certainly a matter of personal preference. 
 
My choice would be Wetherholt based on the level of competition he's faced in his three seasons playing in the Big 12. His pure speed also separates him from some of the others, including Gyorko and Popovich, who weren't considered burners on the diamond, according to the pro scouts.
 
Later this summer, Wetherholt could become the first WVU position player taken in the first round of the Major League Draft. Wetherholt came into the season rated among the top positional prospects with one recent draft projection having him going 12^th overall to the Boston Red Sox.
 
Currently, Whitmore (46^th overall) and Gyorko (59^th overall) are the two highest WVU position players ever taken in the regular June draft.