Orioles' series in Colorado turns into Holliday family event

DENVER – Playing in the majors at age 20 already presents a litany of challenges for Jackson Holliday. Now that he’s in Colorado with the Orioles, he’s tested to remember incidents that happened when he was a young boy. The heartwarming family moments. The silly stuff. Keep ‘em coming.

Matt Holliday spent his first five seasons with the Rockies and returned in 2018 for his final 25 games before retirement. He held Jackson in his arms after his team won the 2007 National League Championship Series, an iconic photo that was shown, among so many others, during last night’s broadcast.

Jackson would celebrate his fourth birthday in December. Things that happened back then aren’t crystal clear in his mind, but media at his locker tried to pry it out of him.

“I remember vaguely just moments here and there, the playoffs, and certain things like, playing yesterday (at Dodger Stadium) they did the MVP chants for (Shohei) Ohtani and I kind of remember that whenever my dad was here,” he said. “And obviously, whenever he came back with St. Louis. To come here and just be a part of everything.”

What about playing Wiffle Ball? Surely, he’s got some tales to share.

“Like I said, it’s vague memories,” he replied, “but I’ve heard all the stories, so it feels like memories.”

He didn’t remember nailing reporters on the back of the head, but apparently it happened.

“No, no, I don’t,” he said, smiling again, “but sorry if I hit you.”

There’s so much to like about Jackson Holliday, and his handling of the media certainly is among them. Always polite, always trying to cooperate.

Holliday is thrilled to play anywhere in the majors, but the Rockies series must have been circled on the calendar. Matt and younger brother Ethan made the trip and were on the field and in the dugout during batting practice.

”It’s kind of hard to explain growing up here a little bit and watching my dad play here for so long,” Jackson said. “It’s obviously very special for me. I’m glad to be able to be here. Just excited to have a bunch of family and friends here.”

Matt attracted the first big media scrum, this one packed inside the home dugout. He’s hugely popular with reporters and fans, and his appearance for Jackson’s games was treated like, well, a holiday.

“It’s obviously a little different than when I usually come here,” he said. “It’s pretty cool. It’s pretty awesome to think that, it doesn’t seem that long ago Jackson was running around here, we were playing Wiffle Ball, and now he’s got a chance to play on this field. Excited to watch and be back here.

“The place is beautiful as ever. Just have a lot of fond memories here, obviously, as a family and with Jackson, and to get a chance to come and watch him play on this field is pretty surreal.”

Matt, 44, might have tried to extend his career if he knew that Jackson would make his major league debut in April.

“I wish he had told me he was gonna be up so fast,” Matt said. “I saw Rich Hill’s back. Rich Hill is my age, so if he can do it, I don’t know why I couldn’t.”

This is where reality intervenes.

“Then I watched the Dodgers’ bullpen throw and I think, ‘Probably not gonna come back,’” he said. “It would have been cool, it would have been amazing, obviously, but six years is probably too big a gap at this point.”

Ethan is a senior at Stillwater High School and ranked as the No. 1 draft prospect in 2025. The brothers could both go one/one.

“It’ll be good to be home for the offseason and get to train with him and kind of just be around him and help him navigate that experience that I had,” Jackson said. “Probably a little bit different. He’s a little more top-tier than I was at the beginning, so his draft teams will probably be a little bit less teams than mine. I think I almost knocked out all of them. It’s a really cool situation to share with him and I’m just excited for him.”

Matt figured out early on that his sons’ talents weren’t typical.

“Just because you watch their actions and you watch them do things, and their swing mechanics that they sort of have naturally, I don’t know why, and are imitating, probably, what’s going on in front of them,” Matt said.

“I knew they had some pretty unique skill sets, so you never know what that means. As a parent, you just kind of want to fan that flame of baseball.: Here’s what you’ve got to do if you want to try to play at the next level and the next level after that. I’ve known for quite a while that they had the ability to play at a high level. Now, I didn’t know Jackson would play in the majors at 20 years old, but I knew that he had some skills.”

Though Jackson has an expansive set of tools, his father brought more raw power at that age. Matt accumulated 316 home runs, including 36 in 2007 when he was runner-up for Most Valuable Player in the National League.

“I can probably hit it further than he can,” Matt said, “but he’s way more advanced than I was at 20.”

Ethan, however is “a different story,” Matt said.

“Ethan’s hitting the ball in the 110-112 (mph) range with a wooden bat at 17 years old, so he might have me on raw power. I don’t know. We’ll see. He’s got to hit a few more homers before I relinquish that.”

Jackson concedes without hesitation that Ethan outmuscles him at the plate.

“He’s a pretty special talent," Jackson said. "Maybe they can get him out there to hit BP and you guys will be able to see what he can do. Yeah, he’s definitely more physical than I was at that age.”

The Hollidays did a local television interview together in the dugout before the game, and before Jackson could fully concentrate on the Rockies. He started at second base and went 1-for-3 with an RBI triple, walk, run scored and stolen base. He also reached on an error.

There’s still time for that photo replicating the sweet 2007 father-son moment. Dad is all in, but he has doubts about Jackson.

“I would. He probably wouldn’t go for it,” Matt said.

“I’d be willing to recreate a funny picture. He might be embarrassed. You know what I mean? He’s trying to look cool. He’s a younger guy. You can’t do funny things like that. I could try and just catch him off guard and pick him up. He’d probably wonder what I was doing. It would be really funny.”

While the idea amuses Jackson, he issues a warning.

“I don’t think he could pick me up with all of his pickleball injuries.”