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<\/p>\nSTILLWATER, Okla. \u2014 In the leadup to Sunday\u2019s MLB Draft, many pundits will note the Holliday family\u2019s deep baseball ties. Matt Holliday played 15 years in the major leagues and made seven All-Star games. His oldest son, Jackson, was drafted first overall three years ago and is now the second baseman for the Baltimore Orioles.<\/p>\n
Now, Ethan Holliday is next in line for a baseball dynasty forged under the endless skies of Oklahoma. He is a gifted 6-foot-4 shortstop with tremendous raw power from the left side. He has a chance to go to the Washington Nationals first overall, and if he doesn\u2019t go there, draft experts predict he will go fourth to the Colorado Rockies, the same organization that drafted his father.<\/p>\n
Some may mention that the line doesn\u2019t actually start with Matt, Jackson, and Ethan. Tom Holliday \u2014 Matt\u2019s father and Jackson\u2019s and Ethan\u2019s grandfather \u2014 was a longtime Division I baseball coach, including a seven-year run as the coach at Oklahoma State. His brother, Dave, is a veteran scout for the Philadelphia Phillies. Matt\u2019s brother, Josh, is now the coach at OSU.<\/p>\n
There are other families out there who have made baseball their business. The Alous, the Boones, the Griffeys. Thirteen pairs of brothers have been drafted as first-round picks. B.J. Upton went second in 2002, and Justin Upton went first in 2005.<\/p>\n
But if Ethan were to go No. 1, it would be the first time in baseball history two brothers have both been 1-1 picks. Only Peyton and Eli Manning have done that in any major American sport.<\/p>\n
Try to explain how Jackson and Ethan both grew up to be so good, and everyone in the family shrugs. Part nature, part nurture.<\/p>\n
\u201cThis was all by accident,\u201d Tom says.<\/p>\n
No amount of nature, though, guarantees this level of familial athletic success. No amount of nurture ensures that even two physically gifted boys will become elite prospects at this level.<\/p>\n
That kind of feat takes generations to build.<\/p>\n
To grasp how all this came to be, you have to rewind more than 100 years. To understand how the Hollidays built a foundation where baseball is intertwined with family, where relentless work is assumed and exceptional achievement is expected, you have to leave Oklahoma\u2019s red-dirt plains, take an oblong detour through the desert and head to the foothills of the Appalachian Mountains.<\/p>\n
That\u2019s where a man named Donald Holliday had a dream.<\/p>\n
Donald Holliday was born in 1918 in the little town of Somerfield, Pa., a place they later razed and flooded to create the Youghiogheny Dam. He was one of 11 children. Most of his siblings were into fishing or hunting, the mountain life. Donald had an affinity for baseball.<\/p>\n
As the family legend goes, the famed Yankees scout Paul Krichell discovered Don. He was a talented catcher, and the scout began making arrangements for Don to report to spring training. But this was the outset of World War II. Don was called into the Army. He was in North Africa when a blast went off and ruptured his left eardrum. By the time the war was over, he still had dreams of showing up to Yankees spring training and sliding into pinstripes. But his hearing was permanently damaged. He was older now and could hardly get into a squat. Real life beckoned. He never stopped following the Yankees.<\/p>\n
Donald became a truck driver in Uniontown, 55 miles outside Pittsburgh. He worked from 4 a.m. until sundown. For his youngest boys Tom and Dave, baseball was a way to capture his attention.<\/p>\n
\u201cA way to connect with him,\u201d Dave said.<\/p>\n
The boys stood on the porch under Pennsylvania stars, swinging a bat while Pittsburgh Pirates games sounded over the radio. Sometimes Donald sat in the kitchen, radio to his right ear, barely able to decipher the crackling signal of the Yankees game.<\/p>\n
On the rare occasions Donald got off early on a Friday, he would bound through the door, smile on his face, pep in his voice. \u201cGet in the car,\u201d he\u2019d say, \u201cWe\u2019re going to New York.\u201d<\/p>\n
They made the pilgrimage to old Yankee Stadium, stayed for the games Saturday and Sunday, then drove back to Pennsylvania.<\/p>\n
\u201cHe was so into baseball,\u201d Tom said all these years later. \u201cWe had to explore it.\u201d<\/p>\n
In 1971, a letter from the desert helped Tom set a new trajectory. Don sat across the kitchen table, smoke billowing from a cigarette in his hand, while his son shuffled through a stack of mail. Notre Dame, Ohio State, Michigan State, Pitt and more. Tom was a terrific high school quarterback on a losing team with a shoddy offensive line. He was also an all-region baseball player.<\/p>\n
At that table, Tom weighed his options. He wanted to play baseball, but he was from a cold-weather state, and only one place wanted him on a baseball-only offer. That was Yavapai College, a small school in the middle of Arizona with a swashbuckling coach named Gary Ward.<\/p>\n
Sometimes Tom saw the letters, assumed they were advertisements for a strange school whose name he couldn\u2019t pronounce.<\/p>\n
Something in Donald Holliday\u2019s gut told him Tom should take those letters more seriously.<\/p>\n
\u201cThat guy writes you all the time,\u201d he said. \u201cMaybe give that guy a chance.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cHe didn\u2019t say much,\u201d Tom says of his father. \u201cBut when he did, you listened.\u201d<\/p>\n
It\u2019s a Thursday morning in Jenks, Okla., south of Tulsa, at the 6A state baseball tournament. Matt Holliday leans forward and grabs onto a black chain-link fence. Cowbells ring from the stands, and Stillwater High players run onto the field.<\/p>\n
None of them move with quite the same grace as Ethan Holliday. He\u2019s tall and sleek, with long hair, all-American looks and one hell of a pedigree.<\/p>\n
\u201cI want my kids to pursue their passion,\u201d Matt says. \u201cThe fact that it matches up with something I\u2019m passionate about, it makes it all the better. If they had picked music or something like that, I would be able to stand by and clap but not necessarily able to help.\u201d<\/p>\n
Tom, Josh and all of Matt\u2019s family live within a 10-mile radius in Stillwater, the kind of college town where people come back and measure time against the institutions that remain. The Hollidays are one of those institutions.<\/p>\n
Ethan hits left-handed and grades out with easy plus power. He\u2019s bigger and a more aggressive swinger than his older brother. Their games differ, and so do their personalities.
Jackson, slowly finding his groove in his second season with the Orioles, is level-headed and serious, a lot like Matt.<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n
Ethan has starred for Stillwater, like his father, uncle and brother before him. (Sarah Phipps\/The Oklahoman\/Imagn Images)<\/p>\n
Everyone says Ethan is more emotional, maybe like his mother, Leslee. Maybe more like Tom.<\/p>\n
\u201cA little bit more life of the party, wears his emotions a little bit more on his sleeve,\u201d Matt says. \u201cI think that\u2019s part of having kids. All your kids are different.\u201d<\/p>\n
Leslee is the great-niece of Bob Fenimore, an All-American football player at Oklahoma State who finished third in the 1945 Heisman Trophy race. It is not only the Holliday genes that make Ethan and Jackson preternaturally gifted.<\/p>\n
But the baseball aptitude? That\u2019s a distinctly Holliday trait. Before the 2022 season, Matt accepted the job to become the St. Louis Cardinals\u2019 bench coach. He resigned from the post before the season started, deciding he needed to spend more time with his family.<\/p>\n
MLB players still trek to Oklahoma to hit with Matt, who \u2014 if he wants it \u2014 could still have a future as an MLB coach or manager.<\/p>\n
\u201cIf you want to feel bad about where you are as a hitter, go hit with the Holliday family,\u201d said 14-year major leaguer Matt Carpenter, who once rebuilt his swing in Stillwater.<\/p>\n
The Stillwater High Pioneers wear blue and yellow, but in the stands, multiple kids wear Orioles jerseys with Jackson\u2019s No. 7 \u2014 the same number Matt wore for much of his career and the same number Ethan wears now \u2014 on the back.<\/p>\n
Three years ago, Jackson and Ethan played on the Stillwater High team, just like Josh and Matt did way back when. Now Brady Holliday, Josh\u2019s son and Ethan\u2019s cousin, hits leadoff and plays second base as a sophomore.<\/p>\n
\u201cI graduate next week, and it\u2019s hard to believe,\u201d Ethan said after his final high-school game. \u201cI\u2019m proud of my time in Stillwater, and I\u2019m looking forward to what\u2019s next. But Stillwater is my home. It\u2019s home forever. Nothing can take that away.\u201d<\/p>\n
Sitting at a breakfast joint in Stillwater, Tom twists his head left, then right. The boy who once yearned for his father\u2019s attention is now the patriarch of a baseball dynasty.<\/p>\n
Those letters from Ward led to Tom playing two seasons as a catcher at Yavapai College. He finished his college career at Miami, then played one professional season in the Pirates system. There was a job at Miami, then a year at Arizona State.<\/p>\n
Ward won junior college national titles in \u201975 and \u201977, and after that 1977 season, he practically had his pick of DI jobs. Wherever he went, Ward wanted Holliday to be his top assistant.<\/p>\n
Tom favored UCLA or Cal. But Ward was from a tiny Oklahoma railroad town called Ramona, and he liked the school in Stillwater.<\/p>\n
\u201cOklahoma State?\u201d Tom said. \u201cWhere the hell is that?\u201d<\/p>\n
With a wife and baby in the car, Tom arrived in Stillwater, 15 miles that feels like an eternity off Interstate 35, and went straight to the baseball field off Knoblock Street. It was called University Park back then, and it was a travesty. Grass grew in the baselines. Weeds, six feet high, covered the infield. There was a massive pile of dirt between second and third.<\/p>\n
Tom found a pay phone.<\/p>\n
\u201cWell,\u201d Ward told him, \u201cget it ready for practice. We got a lot of work to do.\u201d<\/p>\n
They sifted the dirt, pulled the weeds, bled and sweat under a sweltering summer sun.<\/p>\n
That first year, they won 40 games.<\/p>\n
Over the next 19 seasons, Oklahoma State went to the College World Series 11 times. Pete Incaviglia pinged home runs that scraped the sky. Robin Ventura stacked hits like the bricks they used to build the new Allie P. Reynolds Stadium.<\/p>\n
All the while, two small boys soaked it all in. Josh and Matt Holliday grew up living and breathing Oklahoma State baseball. They chased foul balls, mimicked players\u2019 stances, stole cookies out of Ward\u2019s desk. OSU players were their heroes. They played on a big stage. Their world felt small.<\/p>\n
\u201cThere was never a time that baseball wasn\u2019t anything other than a passion that we learned to work at and respect,\u201d Josh said. \u201c(Dad) taught us to do that. He prepared us. He pushed us. He toughened us up and made us competitors. He never sugarcoated anything but he made us believe anything was possible.\u201d<\/p>\n
Josh grew into a quarterback, star baseball player and valedictorian at Stillwater High.<\/p>\n
Matt went on to become a star quarterback, too. Unlike his father and brother, he was tall and sculpted, taking more after Kathy\u2019s side of the family.<\/p>\n
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<\/p>\n
Matt, Kathy, Tom and Josh Holliday. (Courtesy of Tom Holliday)<\/p>\n
They all still laugh about the time Matt came home with a C on his report card. Josh, who once tossed his younger brother\u2019s Nintendo over the back fence thinking it would help keep him focused, was yelling. \u201cC is for average. You\u2019re not average.\u201d<\/p>\n
The two nearly came to blows, one of the only times they ever fought. That night, Matt came to his parents\u2019 bedroom said, \u201cI won\u2019t get any more C\u2019s.\u201d<\/p>\n
In a recruiting class that featured Michael Vick and Carson Palmer, some services considered Matt the best quarterback recruit in the country. He had offers from all over but committed to play two sports at Oklahoma State.<\/p>\n
When the first round of the MLB draft came, teams shied away, fearing he wouldn\u2019t sign. Dave Holliday, Tom\u2019s brother, worked for the Rockies back then.<\/p>\n
Long story short: Colorado drafted Matt in the seventh round. He received an $840,000 signing bonus and a contract clause that would allow him to return to football after three years.<\/p>\n
Matt chose baseball and never looked back.<\/p>\n
Tom was Ward\u2019s pitching coach and ace recruiter for 19 seasons, until one day in 1996, Ward told his old protege his back hurt and he had seen enough. Tom was soon named head coach, tasked with taming the monster they built.<\/p>\n
Josh played for his dad at Oklahoma State, then spent two years in the Blue Jays system. More than the grinding existence of a fringe prospect, he wanted the life he watched every day growing up. Teaching, coaching, helping.<\/p>\n
He came back and worked for Tom as an assistant.<\/p>\n
While Matt rose up the pro ranks, they lived this baseball life together. Until 2003, when \u2014 another long story short \u2014 school politics got messy, and Tom Holliday\u2019s contract was not renewed. The Cowboys had missed the postseason in three of his final four years.<\/p>\n
Josh has called it one of the hardest times of his life, the family thrust out of the place where they had invested so much.<\/p>\n
\u201cIn many ways, looking back, it was a blessing,\u201d Josh said. \u201cBut it didn\u2019t feel like one. It felt like something you loved didn\u2019t love you back anymore.\u201d<\/p>\n
Tom went on to be Augie Garrido\u2019s pitching coach at Texas. Josh went out on his own coaching odyssey, including stops at Georgia Tech, Arizona State and Vanderbilt.
Matt, meanwhile, blossomed into an All-Star outfielder, revered both for his hitting prowess and his savvy leadership.<\/p>\n
He traveled the big-league circuit with his family. A young Jackson grew up hitting rolled-up straw wrappers with butter knives at the dinner table. He smacked sock balls over the fish tank in Tom and Kathy\u2019s living room. He was a sideshow in major-league clubhouses, where Matt\u2019s teammates marveled at his innate ability to mimic any swing.<\/p>\n
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<\/p>\n
Matt would bring Ethan around the field during his days with the Rockies, where friends like Matt Carpenter helped mold him as a young player. (AP Photo \/ David Zalubowski)<\/p>\n
Then, one day in 2012, another twist of fate. Tom Holliday got a call from Mike Holder, the AD at Oklahoma State. Holder told Tom he was going to hire a new baseball coach. He wanted Josh, but only with Tom\u2019s blessing.<\/p>\n
Tom gave his approval.<\/p>\n
Josh brought back the interlocking O and S on the team\u2019s caps and restored the team\u2019s old-school jerseys. He once said his only hesitation was that he might care about the place too much.<\/p>\n
\u201cThis is my major leagues,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n
A few years later, after Tom was done coaching at Auburn, he and Kathy loaded the trucks and moved back to Stillwater.<\/p>\n
\u201cI was worried about being around,\u201d Tom said. \u201cBut we said, \u2018To hell with it. We\u2019re gonna go, because we\u2019re gonna be together.\u2019\u201d<\/p>\n
At the end of Matt\u2019s playing career \u2014 which, toward the end, took him to Donald Holliday\u2019s beloved Yankees \u2014 he, too, moved his family from their home by the ocean in Jupiter, Fla.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe\u2019re coming to Stillwater,\u201d he told his father.<\/p>\n
\u201cTo visit?\u201d Tom asked.<\/p>\n
\u201cNo,\u201d Matt said. \u201cTo stay.\u201d<\/p>\n
Baseball molded this family, scattered them across the country, then brought them all back together.<\/p>\n
\u201cIn the end,\u201d Josh said, \u201cyou only go out and work so you can come back home and be with your people.\u201d<\/p>\n
Tom Holliday watches his grandsons less through a sentimental eye and more with the hardened focus of an old coach. But his eyes still get misty when he thinks of his father. What might Donald Holliday think of all this?<\/p>\n
That one elicits a laugh.<\/p>\n
\u201cProbably,\u201d Tom said, \u201che would light a cigarette, sit there and say, \u2018You know, we need to get Jackson traded to the Yankees. Or, don\u2019t let Ethan go to anybody but the Yankees.\u2019\u201d<\/p>\n
Here in Stillwater, the next generation took to the game because it was interlaced with life. Tom threw batting practice to Jackson, took Ethan down in the garage to vent and hit soft toss after a bad day at school. As they grew older, Jackson, Ethan and cousin Brady gathered each morning to take grounders and hit BP.<\/p>\n
\u201cEveryone in our family lives in Oklahoma, so being able to go back and go out to their land, be around all my cousins and uncles, it was pretty cool,\u201d Jackson said.<\/p>\n
Out at Matt Holliday\u2019s property, there\u2019s a Wiffle Ball field and five No. 7s stuck on orange walls. Matt spent a season on Josh\u2019s staff at Oklahoma State. Tom spent summers coaching dozens of draft picks on Cape Cod. Uncle Dave lives about an hour away in Bixby. To this day, Matt, Ethan and Jackson hit and work out at OSU. The kids grew up on home-run derbies and competitions in the cage.<\/p>\n
Matt has another son, Reed, who is not yet in high school. Josh has a daughter, Olivia. Matt\u2019s daughter, Gracyn, watches every game, talks baseball on the ride home like the rest of them.<\/p>\n
\u201cMan,\u201d Tom says, laughing. \u201cWe really ruined these kids.\u201d<\/p>\n
Five hours after Ethan Holliday\u2019s last high school baseball game, he stood on the concourse at the shining O\u2019Brate Stadium with his father and a handful of teammates, watching Oklahoma State play. Tom was up in the booth broadcasting for ESPN+.<\/p>\n
\u201cThey have my back no matter what,\u201d Ethan said of his family. \u201cIf I didn\u2019t have my circle, I\u2019d be out of whack. They\u2019re my people, and I\u2019m really thankful.\u201d<\/p>\n
Donald Holliday died in 2001 and never met his great-grandchildren. But Josh has memories of visits to the house in Pennsylvania, playing Wiffle Ball and listening to the Pirates on the radio.<\/p>\n
In this odd little town where everything is painted orange, Tom Holliday\u2019s boys recreated their childhood. And maybe without knowing it, they built the kind of life Donald Holliday wanted.<\/p>\n
(Top photo of Matt, Ethan and Jackson: Daniel Shirey \/ MLB Photos via Getty Images)<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"STILLWATER, Okla. \u2014 In the leadup to Sunday\u2019s MLB Draft, many pundits will note the Holliday family\u2019s deep…\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":54311,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[41],"tags":[1283,1266,30698,62,3692,67,132,68],"class_list":{"0":"post-54310","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-mlb","8":"tag-colorado-rockies","9":"tag-mlb","10":"tag-oklahoma-state-cowboys","11":"tag-sports","12":"tag-st-louis-cardinals","13":"tag-united-states","14":"tag-unitedstates","15":"tag-us"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/pubeurope.com\/@us\/114829390282346957","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/54310","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=54310"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/54310\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/54311"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=54310"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=54310"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=54310"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}