By JOHN E. HOOVER Sports Columnist on Jun 11, 2012, at 12:19 PM Updated on 6/11 at 12:23 PM
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The last time Josh Holliday hit a home run for Oklahoma State was June 4, 1999, in a Super Regional victory at Baylor.
He hit another one on Monday when he hired Rob Walton to be his pitching coach.
Holliday himself was hired only on Friday. His decision to reach out immediately to Walton proves his uncommon maturity.
Walton was the man that Holliday beat out for the job. To make Walton his first hire as a head coach shows that Holliday is about winning and restoring the OSU glory first and foremost. If Holliday, 35, had an ego, he’d have never called Walton.
Going to work for the man who won the job he wanted also shows that Walton has no ego.
“We’re going to team up and do the best job that we can to put the program back where it needs to be,” Walton said.
Walton, 49, was considered by many to be the favorite for the job. He interviewed last week, then was called back to Stillwater one more time — to be told by Mike Holder and his seven-member search committee that he would not be the Cowboys’ head coach. Instead, they went with Holliday.
Walton, the former Oklahoma State pitching star who went 20-3 with a 3.74 ERA in his four years in Stillwater, probably is the nation’s best pitching coach. Bringing him back to Stillwater should allay any fears OSU fans might have had about Holliday’s sudden ascension. It not only shows Holliday is eager to lay aside his own personal gain, it shows he’s just plain smart.
In nine years as head coach at Oral Roberts, Walton’s teams compiled a 367-167 record. Since Sunny Golloway hired Walton as pitching coach in 1999, the Golden Eagles won 14 consecutive conference titles and made 14 straight NCAA Tournament appearances.
The guess here is that Holliday had virtually a blank check to hire Walton. That might not take as much as it sounds, though. Walton made $108,000 plus benefits at ORU (IRS documents show his overall compensation at $182,500), and a source said Walton hadn’t received a raise in three years.
Just last year, Walton was offered the job as pitching coach at Oregon for roughly $150,000 a year.
OSU should be able to pay that, if not more.
Holliday said, “When this opportunity to bring Rob into our program presented itself, and after sitting and talking with him and his family and sensing the true passion for Oklahoma State, his unique and well-known talents in the game and his desire to team up and pour himself into the kids and help us become great, it was just a tremendous fit.”
Oklahoma State will be great, not good, with Holliday calling the shots and Walton calling the pitches. Both are excellent recruiters, both have a talent for coaching the game, and both have a passion for Oklahoma State.
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