AT FIRST, HE was a mascot, and then he was a marvel, and now, more than a decade after he first toddled into a major league clubhouse, Jackson Holliday’s transformation is complete. He talks like them. He looks like them. He plays like them. And on Sunday night, when his name is called early in Major League Baseball’s amateur draft, it will codify his newest identity: one of them.
He is far from the only one with a familiar surname expected to join the latest crop of big league aspirants. There is Druw Jones (No. 1 player in the class), son of Andruw. And Cam Collier (potential top-5 pick), son of Lou. And Justin Crawford, son of Carl (potential top-10 pick). Elijah Green (top 5-10) and Kumar Rocker (first-rounder) have dads who played in the NFL. The fathers of Brooks Lee (top 5) and Tucker Toman (first-rounder) coach college baseball.
But no one in this draft, or any recent draft for that matter, has a baseball legacy that runs as deep as Holliday’s. His dad, Matt, the seven-time MLB All-Star; his grandfather Tom, a college coach for four decades; his uncle Josh, currently the coach at perennial power Oklahoma State — Holliday was born into baseball, enmeshed by it. And no place fostered that more than the clubhouses that helped rear him.
At 3 years old, Holliday regularly ambled around the Colorado Rockies’ locker room, plastic bat always in hand. Even then, his lefty swing was so pure The New York Times shouted it out before Game 1 of the 2007 World Series. Two years later, Holliday’s father started an eight-season run in St. Louis, where the son grew from preternaturally talented kid to gifted preteen. After that, a year in New York, where as a 13-year-old Holliday befriended a Yankees rookie named Aaron Judge. And then in his dad’s final year, back to Colorado, where a new generation of Rockies — and a teenage…
Source : espn
