Ep. 38 | Tom Holliday

What You'll Learn in This Episode

Host Ross Hawley and co-host Jim Schwanke sit down with Tom Holliday, one of the most respected coaches of his generation and the patriarch of one of baseball's best-known families. Holliday spent 26 years at Oklahoma State, first as an assistant under Gary Ward and later as head coach, and also coached at Arizona State, NC State, Texas, and in the Cape Cod League. Schwanke was on that original Oklahoma State staff with him, which makes this part conversation and part reunion.

They cover what it took to build a program in Stillwater with no budget and a field with no warning track, what recruiting looked like when scouts handed coaches their draft lists, and how Holliday raised two sons, Matt and Josh, inside all of it. The back half becomes a coaching seminar on one idea he picked up at age 50: eliminate confusion.

The highlights:

• Why he never felt stress in a dugout, and what stress looked like on other staffs
• Getting released in pro ball, then being offered a player-coach contract two days later
• Building Oklahoma State from condemned bleachers and one sprinkler on the mound
• Selling Stillwater to families in New York City and Los Angeles
• Raising two future big leaguers by hiding nothing from them
• A late-night argument about hitting between a Cy Young winner and a big league slugger
• Player development as the actual reward of coaching
• Augie Garrido's lesson on eliminating confusion for players and coaches
• Why he thinks every player needs six to eight weeks away from the game

A Career Without Stress

Asked whether he is satisfied with his career, Holliday says yes, with one what-if: a front office job in Major League Baseball, with a couple of friends dragged along to build an organization that won. The condition mattered more than the title. It would have had to be with people chasing a world championship rather than saving money or making an owner look good, and he notes the pro game tends to shut college coaches out because it is their world.

On the difference between running a program and coaching pitchers, he says he never learned what stress meant. Some coaches tighten up when a game starts; that was when he could relax into nine innings of battle. He saw the alternative playing at Miami for a head coach he liked who smoked a pack of cigarettes in a college dugout and never came to practice, so he had no idea how good his own team was until a game ended.

"I knew there was going to come a day I'd get beat. But I never went into a game thinking I was getting beat."

Choosing Coaching Over Playing

Holliday grew up in an academic Catholic school environment in Pennsylvania, where the baseball season ran about 15 games and he assumed, like every kid, that he could play everything. Learning to rebound from failure is what first made him consider coaching, and he credits his high school basketball coaches for teaching him discipline. In college his teammates kept asking him for help with their swings, which told him he might be a better coach than player.

Pro ball settled it. He had a short career, got released, and two days later was offered a player-coach contract worth $50 more a month, which he did not understand and said so. Around the same time his college coach called on January 2, having lost an assistant, and asked him to come help a man coaching his first year of college baseball who would go on to a famous career. His wife was pregnant with their first child and he had a degree he could have used to go get a real job. He chose the game.

Building Oklahoma State From Nothing

When Gary Ward asked Holliday to leave Arizona State, then the mecca of college baseball, for Oklahoma State, his first question was where the town was. Oklahoma State was not a baseball school. Schwanke, who came from Arizona as a player, describes what the staff inherited: two concrete dugouts, condemned wooden bleachers, and 10 days of work with four side cutters to put in a warning track that did not exist.

"There was one sprinkler going around on the mound with high weeds, on a baseball field we were going to start playing on in about six weeks."

There was no budget. Holliday lived in married student housing, and three of the coaches shared a house that Schwanke's family bought so they could pay rent to them instead of a landlord. They scraped together gas money to get out of Stillwater and used credit card points for motel rooms. Nobody sat around complaining about it, Holliday says. They accepted it and made it theirs.

Learning to Sell a Program

Holliday's reputation is as one of the era's great recruiters, and he says the job was mostly overcoming what people thought of Stillwater. Recruiting New York City or Los Angeles meant convincing parents their son would be safe, finding the parent he could win over, and being blunt that a kid out walking at 11 at night would find trouble. What he never undersold was the coaching: the staff could teach their son to play and make him special, but he had to get acclimated, go to school, and follow the rules. With a lot of good players wanting only pro ball, keeping them eligible was the real battle, because teaching the game was the fun part.

They were also told repeatedly that they did not belong. Holliday remembers Augie Garrido telling him in California to go home and recruit Oklahoma kids, and another established coach saying the same thing in a parking lot right after Holliday signed a two-way pitcher on the trunk of his car. Instead they took players nobody else wanted, out-recruited OU for a fearless kid from Bixby, and got to Omaha in 1981. They rebuilt quietly in 1982, got back, and from then on kids watching on television knew who they were.

Schwanke's favorite example is Mickey Tettleton, who was not on the scout list the night they went to see another player. Tettleton arrived as a high school shortstop, was too big for the position and had bad hands at third, then had depth perception problems in the outfield despite a cannon for an arm, so they made him a catcher. He became a Silver Slugger in the big leagues, and a story the staff could tell on the recruiting trail forever.

Raising Two Sons Inside the Game

Holliday's approach to raising Matt and Josh in a coach's house was to hide nothing. They sat and listened while he stayed on the phone until midnight talking a homesick player into staying, then asked him why he did not just let the guy go home. They saw things he says you do not necessarily want your kids to see, and he let them see it anyway, because he wanted them to love what he did rather than resent it for taking him away.

"The strongest pill I can tell you is expose your kid to the sport and don't hide anything."

Both boys were good enough athletes to choose between baseball and football, and he let them decide, partly because he was never sure he had picked the right sport himself. Josh turned down $390,000 from Minnesota because he had told the club $400,000 before the draft and would not move. Holliday offered the scouting director the last $10,000 himself, and Josh told him that was not the point: he was not afraid to go to school, he wanted college baseball, and he went. Three years later Matt knocked on the door at 12:30 at night to say he wanted to sign, and Holliday, who had been picturing his two sons hitting third and fourth in the same lineup, got him signed. Coaching friends in the NFL had told him Matt could have been a special quarterback, so when Matt said during a hard minor league stretch that he was staying with baseball and wanted a new contract, Holliday got that done too.

What both had before either decision was proximity. They grew up around players like Pete Incaviglia, who was at Oklahoma State strictly to get ready for the big leagues, and Robin Ventura, who enjoyed college while being completely dedicated to the game. Holliday did not care if the players stuffed his kids in a garbage can, as long as they were in the room.

Player Development Was the Reward

His youth baseball advice comes out of the same instinct. Encourage a kid, but do not make him. He does not understand hauling children to travel tournaments they do not want to attend when big leaguers are the ones supposed to travel, and he thinks playing another sport helps most kids. He is also honest about what the modern game asks: if you can hit, hit every day, and if you want to learn a position, go be a sponge around someone who plays it well.

His proof is a story. At a golf tournament his program hosted, Bobby Bonds and John Denny, fresh off a Cy Young, spent an hour and a half arguing about whether a high fastball could get Bonds out, while a barely 20-year-old Barry Bonds played with Holliday's kids in the next room because there was no sitter. The material was exactly what his staff talked about, and he wishes he had recorded it. Asked later whether he listened to his dad talk hitting like that, Barry said some of it, not all of it.

Asked what part of coaching he liked best, he does not hesitate: player development. When one of their guys reached the big leagues, the staff threw a party, because they felt like they had something to do with it.

That was also the hardest part to watch from a distance. Holliday was coaching at Texas when Matt got called up, and his head coach would not let him leave before a game against Nebraska, so his wife went without him and he recorded the game. It brought tears to his eyes, especially knowing his son had hit .430 in spring training, been sent back, and spent seven games in Triple-A first. He called Jeremy Burnitz, a former Oklahoma State player who had known Matt as a kid, and asked him to look after him. Schwanke's version is smaller and just as clear: the day his own son took the car at 16 to go hit with teammates, he knew the kid would be fine on his own.

Three Generations, and Knowing When to Be Quiet

Holliday is now watching grandsons. He remembers Ethan wanting to break a bat in half after striking out three times in a game in Florida, and telling him that three-strikeout nights happen, so knock it off. Part of being around, he says, is telling kids the stories they did not see, like the fact that the best player on those Oklahoma State teams struck out too.

When Jackson reached the big leagues at 20, Holliday's instinct was to ask why the hurry, given the old theory that a player needs 2,000 minor league at-bats first. Then he reminded himself who the kid's sounding board was and told himself to be quiet and watch.

The One Thing He Would Redo

Holliday's only real regret is timing. Once his sons were grown he probably should have taken a head coaching job sooner, and he names Tennessee as the one he might have accepted either the first or second time it was offered. What kept him in place was Jimmy Johnson telling him that his own biggest mistake was job hopping, and that it cost him his marriage and his relationship with his kids. Holliday wanted both sons to have a stable high school life, and he believed the Oklahoma State job would eventually be his, which it was when Gary Ward's back finally wore him down. He also argues that many coaches are better in a second job than a first, because the first is where the mistakes happen, and fans who loved you at the hire feel differently after a 40-win season.

Eliminate Confusion

The most useful stretch of the episode comes from Holliday's time as pitching coach under Augie Garrido at Texas. He was 50 and had already been a head coach, and the first topic at their first dinner together was failure.

"I want to eliminate confusion for the player when he's playing and for the coaches when they're coaching."

Holliday admits it landed like a critique. Over lunch the next day they kept at it, and he asked where confusion comes from. The answer was uncomfortable and familiar: one coach tells a player to try something, it does not work, the player takes it to another coach, and because coaches want to help, he ends up playing his coaches against each other. Everyone in the profession has been innocently guilty of it, Holliday says.

The fix is listening instead of dictating. His example is a young Texas pitcher named Huston Street, an ultra-competitive kid who took getting hit personally and genuinely did not know whether he was a sidearmer, a submariner, or a three-quarter guy. Holliday's job was not to assign an arm slot but to ask where he felt most comfortable and what he could do from there: can you spin it, sink it, slide it. He frames that as talking to players like friends rather than as their coach, because once a player knows you care, he will actually listen.

Advice for Players, Parents, and Coaches

For players: the game is not easy, and it has to be yours.

"Make sure that you fall in love with baseball. Don't do it because somebody else is in love with baseball and is ramming it down your throat."

He also points out how much the physical bar has moved. He and Schwanke had just watched Johnny Bench on television praising a pitcher who threw 86 to 88 in a 1970s World Series, which is a changeup now, and timing 97 to 98 is a different game than the one he played.

For parents: relax, and stop coaching failure. Ian Kinsler was a 17th-round pick, and no predictor explained what his work ethic and talent turned into. Let kids play, let them work, and let them learn to love the work, because performance is largely out of their control. Do not shake your head in the stands after a strikeout, because a kid who sees you overreact to failure can be crushed by it. Let them go home angry and sit in the back seat confused, since sorting out confusion is part of every sport. What he cannot teach is the part parents ask about most.

"You can teach kids how to hit. You can teach them how to pitch. What you can't teach is their heart."

For coaches: the scoreboard is not the job description. Coaches made peanuts in his era and there is real money in it now, and his advice is to refuse to be judged on wins and losses. You may have a player for three years. Teach him something about life, which is impossible if he does not trust you.

Rest, and Cold-Weather Tryouts

The episode closes on something both coaches feel strongly about. A showcase event was set for Houston that weekend with a first pitch around 30 degrees, and Holliday's reaction is that asking pitchers to throw max effort in front of scouts in January, on arms barely built up, is asking to blow an arm out. Schwanke compares it to starting a car in cold weather, noting his own pitchers are at about 30 pitches working fastballs and changeups this time of year.

The bigger point is rest. Holliday says every successful baseball person he has known will tell you to take six, seven, or eight weeks completely off, and that players come back loving the game more. Kids hear that now and tell him it is not what they were told. He also notes the math of the college season: big leaguers get six to eight weeks of spring training, while college teams get about 30 days before opening on February 16, and nobody should expect a marquee opening weekend to feel like an exhibition.

Episode Timestamps

Tap any timestamp to jump the player straight to that moment.

• 0:00 — Introduction
• 1:47 — Looking back, and the front office job he never chased
• 3:18 — Head coach, pitching coach, and never feeling the stress
• 6:12 — Pennsylvania, 15-game seasons, and choosing a sport
• 10:26 — Released in pro ball, then offered a player-coach deal
• 13:06 — Being called an architect of college baseball
• 14:25 — Leaving Arizona State for a school that was not a baseball school
• 17:45 — Jim Schwanke on what they inherited in Stillwater
• 20:13 — Recruiting: convincing families that Stillwater was safe
• 23:01 — Out-working everyone on gas money and credit card points
• 25:41 — Out-recruiting OU, and finding Mickey Tettleton
• 27:21 — Raising two sons inside the program
• 30:11 — Josh turning down $390,000 over $10,000
• 31:48 — Matt's late-night decision, and the football path he passed up
• 35:45 — Is there a pill for this? Expose them to everything
• 37:24 — A golf tournament, and a long argument about hitting
• 40:12 — Player development, and a party for every big leaguer
• 44:31 — Did he cry when Matt got called up
• 49:53 — A grandson, three strikeouts, and a bat he wanted to break
• 52:59 — Regrets, and a warning about job hopping
• 55:51 — Advice for players: fall in love with the game yourself
• 1:00:48 — Augie Garrido on eliminating confusion
• 1:02:39 — Listening to the player, and a confused young pitcher
• 1:04:56 — Advice for coaches: don't be judged on wins and losses
• 1:05:41 — January tryouts at 30 degrees, and the case for time off

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Tom Holliday spent 26 years at Oklahoma State as an assistant and then head coach, with other stops including Arizona State, NC State, Texas, and the Cape Cod League. Subscribe to the Baseball Forward Podcast for more conversations with the players, coaches, and leaders elevating the next generation of the game.