  Polarization of the \Lambda hyperon produced with a large transverse momentum
in the unpolarized nucleon-nucleon collision is analyzed in the framework of
QCD factorization. We focus on the mechanism in which the soft-gluon component
of the chiral-odd spin-independent twist-3 quark distribution E_F(x,x) becomes
a source of the polarized quark fragmenting into the polarized \Lambda. Our
simple model estimate for this contribution indicates that it gives rise to a
significant \Lambda polarization at large x_F. This is in parallel with the
observation that the soft gluon pole mechanism gives rise to a large single
transverse spin asymmetry in the pion production at x_F\to 1.
