Tom Holliday knows what a new stadium can deliver
Tom and Kathy Holliday drove into Stillwater on an August day in 1977 and went straight to the OSU baseball park. He had just been hired away from Arizona State by new Cowboy coach Gary Ward.
The Hollidays' 11-monthold son, Josh, was in tow.
They couldn't find the field. Oh, they found a ball diamond, and it had a chainlink fence around it, but a massive load of dirt had been dumped on the grass, obviously not recently, since all kinds of sprouts were growing every which way out of the mound.
“I had never seen weeds 6-8 feet wide,” Holliday said.
He found a phone and called Ward, who was not yet in Stillwater and wouldn't be for a couple of weeks. Yep, the Hollidays had found OSU's facility.
“I couldn't believe
I left Arizona State to come here,” Holliday said.
Holliday got his marching orders from Ward. Get the field in shape to practice when school started in about 10 days. With help from his brother and brotherin-law, Holliday had the field ready.
And Wednesday, a week shy of his 68th birthday, Holliday will walk into O'Brate Stadium, OSU's latest athletic jewel, with a mixture of pride and excitement and anticipation. That baby boy whose parents encountered the weeds 43½ years ago now coaches Cowboy baseball. Josh Holliday grew up running around Allie P. Reynolds Stadium, which opened in 1981 as a state-of-the-art baseball park and jettisoned the Cowboys into the upper tier of diamond powers.
Tom Holliday, who succeeded Ward and coached OSU to the 1999 College World Series, has mixed emotions about this new era of Cowboy baseball.
Oh, Holliday is thrilled for the program and his son.
“Kids aren't going to play in a place any better than that until they get to the big leagues,” Holliday said. “You name it, they've got it. Miniature big-league ballpark.
“Really, really wellthought-out. It's a working paradise. (OSU radio voice) Dave Hunziker just saw it for the first time. He just kept saying, `Wow.'”
But Holliday is a little melancholy. Every time he drives to O'Brate, he also drives by Allie P. and the memories flood in.
Maybe it's the COVID. The buildup to O'Brate's opening, scheduled for March 2020, was huge. George W. Bush was scheduled to throw out the first pitch.
The Cowboys looked loaded. Then the pandemic hit, and everything stopped.
A year later, the Cowboys can christen O'Brate, but without the fanfare and with reduced capacity.
“All the emotional buildup to it for last year has taken a little bit of the spark away,” Holliday said.
And he's a little sad about Allie P., which still stands. OSU even played there last season, before the pandemic, but now the offices are cleaned out and the padding is off the wall and anyone who loved the 40-yearold stadium is feeling a little strange.
“I have weird feelings,” Holliday said. “Then you go across the street and you get excited for all these kids have. I sure hope they appreciate it.”
The Ward/Holliday Cowboys appreciated Allie P. Their first three teams played at University Park, home of those eight-foot weeds.
“A nice high school field,” said Jim Traber, who played at OSU from 1980-82 and now is the voice of Oklahoma City radio on WWLS The Sports Animal. "That's probably what it was. It was just bleachers. It was pretty much the worst place we played.”
A visual of the proposed Allie P. hung in the locker room, giving the Cowboys hope for better times. And better times came.
OSU baseball soared in Allie P. The Cowboys won the Big Eight title in Ward's first year, 1978. When the new stadium opened in 1981, OSU began a streak of seven straight College World Series trips and 16 straight Big Eight championships.
No more officing in in the basketball arena. No more dressing in the football stadium.
“It all came together as soon as we won a little bit,” Holliday said. “Coach Ward asked the athletic director (Dick Young) to build us a stadium. I'll never forget. It was kind of iffy. Oklahoma State never ran around bragging about being overly wealthy.”
But Young came through. Ward and Holliday did the same.
Will O'Brate do for OSU baseball what Allie P. did? Maybe.
Forty years ago, the Cowboys went from virtually no stadium to one of the best. The jump this time isn't quite as dramatic, though Allie P. certainly had faded. O'Brate might be America's best college ballpark, but these days, that's an arms race. The Southeastern Conference is throwing up new stadiums all the time.
“When we got Allie P., it gave us something to show kids,” Holliday said. “Now, this stadium gives Josh the chance to maybe recruit the whole country with the so-called premium guys and probably open a lot more battles with SEC recruiting and the kids who are turning down crazy money to go to school. It'll give him a better chance to ask a kid to trust a coaching staff for three years.
“The stadium's going to help. I don't know that it's going to be a lock cinch thing. Little unfair to assume just because you've got the Taj Mahal, you're going to get THE best players in America.”
But you've got a better chance now. Just as Ward and Holliday did 40 years ago, and soon enough here came the Pete Incaviglias and Robin Venturas and Jeromy Burnitzes.
Holliday thinks about Hunziker's description of the new ballpark. Wow. “What does wow mean?” Holliday asks.
Forty years ago, wow meant Allie P. Reynolds Stadium, which like the out-of-date Astrodome next to gigantic Reliant Stadium down in Houston, is an eyesore to the gem that replaced it.
Probably better if they just tear Allie P. down, Holliday figures. Great memories, but time to move on. Especially if O'Brate Stadium does for OSU baseball what Allie P. did.
Berry Tramel: Berry can be reached at 405-7608080 or at btramel@ oklahoman.com. He can be heard Monday through Friday from 4:40-5:20 p.m. on The Sports Animal radio network, including FM-98.1. Support his work and that of other Oklahoman journalists by purchasing a digital subscription today.