Holliday Calls Cain's NLCS Plunking 'Less Than Tough'

Matt Holliday's controversial slide into Marco Scutaro in the NLCS is still drawing headlines, even during the offseason.

Holliday had some choice words for the San Francisco Giants on Thursday, singling out Matt Cain's retaliatory plunk job of Holliday in Game 7 of the NLCS.


Here are a few lines from Holliday's interview with ITDRoll.com's Morning After in St. Louis.

"There are some things I’d rather not say. I think [Cain] said that the ball slipped out of his hand and got away from him, that’s just part of the game. Honestly, I don’t know. It seems on purpose. I wish that if he wanted to hit me, he would’ve just done it on the first pitch in the next game he had pitched. You know, if you’re going to do it, do it, get it out of the way. But to do it, I don’t remember what the score was but it was out of hand, that’s about it. I thought the timing of it was….I don’t want to get into it. I wasn’t thrilled about it."

"If you’re going to do it, I think that is when you do it. I wouldn’t be happy about it anytime. I just thought that in the situation that it actually did happen it was less than tough."

Even from a Giants fan's perspective, you would have to concede that Cain hitting Holliday in Game 7 of the NLCS while San Francisco was up big was a bit bush league. It was obvious the plunking was in retaliation for Holliday destroying the 5'9"Scutaro earlier in the series, and pay back during a historic comeback from down 3-1 in the series seemed like the ultimate upper hand.

Credit Holliday for keeping his cool in the moment, but it was only a matter of time until he would his thoughts would boil over.

In this situation, everyone is wrong. Holliday was wrong for deliberately sliding late into Scutaro at second base, and Cain was wrong for throwing at Holliday to rub even more dirt into a 3-1 come-from-behind NLCS series defeat.

The best part: The Giants play the Cardinals on April 5, 2013 at AT&T Park.