Few people are as conflicted during this World Series as Tom Holliday.
Holliday, the father of St. Louis slugger Matt Holliday, coached Red Sox manager Tom Farrell during his playing days at Oklahoma State. Farrell starred in Stillwater, Okla., from 1981 to 1984. During his time there he became close with the Hollidays, and he even babysat Matt and his siblings.
Well, perhaps Farrell wasn't a "baby" sitter, but you get the idea.
“I wasn't a little baby, or anything like that,” Holliday said this week. “I mean, he wasn't changing diapers. This was just one of those things where my parents wanted to go out for a while, so let's get a baseball player over here to keep an eye on the kids. They probably gave him some good pizza.”
After Farrell's MLB career, he returned to Stillwater and served as an assistant coach under Tom Holliday, who by that time had been promoted from pitching coach to head coach. In a recent interview the elder Holliday vouched for Farrell's baseball brilliance.
"If I had a baseball team and I had to have somebody to run it and I had my life savings in it," he told the Providence Journal, "I would trust John Farrell as my general manager."
While Tom Holliday does have strong ties to both sides, at the end of the day his rooting interest are clear.
"I had this same feeling when he was with the Red Sox and Matt was playing for the Rockies. It's kind of fun, but it creates a mixed emotion," he told the Providence Journal. "I wish the Cardinals were playing somebody else, and I wish the Red Sox were playing somebody else, so I could root for John to win a championship. But it's kind of hard to root against your son's team."
