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For Rays' Kevin Cash, the fairy tale returns home

 
Rays manager Kevin Cash stands for a portrait at the Northside Little League Fields in Tampa on Feb. 5. Cash, a Tampa native, played on this field between the ages of 10 and 12, and in 1989, with the team that went to the Little League World Series. [WILL VRAGOVIC  |  Times]
Rays manager Kevin Cash stands for a portrait at the Northside Little League Fields in Tampa on Feb. 5. Cash, a Tampa native, played on this field between the ages of 10 and 12, and in 1989, with the team that went to the Little League World Series. [WILL VRAGOVIC | Times]
Published Feb. 13, 2015

TAMPA — Kevin Cash has never been shy about asking why.

If something happened in a baseball game that he didn't quite grasp, a strategic decision, a play that could have been made differently, he would raise the question.

So what if he wasn't 10 years old yet, the coach he was quizzing was his father who had played in the minor leagues, and the conversation was taking place on the patio behind his house on Valley Ranch Drive in north Tampa?

"We'd come home from the games, and I knew the drill," his mother, Patsy, recalled. "We'd go in the house, and the two of them would go right out on the lanai and they'd rehashed everything. This was Little League, but that's how Kevin was. He wanted to know why. ...

"It was very much both ways. It was funny because Kevin didn't always agree, but he was eager to learn. His knowledge of the game was very advanced for his young age."

Cash, it turned out, was just getting started.

Even in Little League, Kevin Cash studied baseball's tactics and strategy.

Cash family

From those early days at Northside Little League to stints at Gaither High and Florida State and a pro career mostly spent bouncing between the big leagues and Triple-A before scouting and coaching, Cash was known — and noticed — for his knowledge, passion, inquisitiveness, work ethic and insatiable interest in the game.

Those attributes led the Rays to hire Cash to replace Joe Maddon, even though he is only 37 — youngest in the majors — and the March 5 spring training opener will be the first game he ever manages.

"His name was known in the organization as someone who had a great baseball mind, had a really good future in the game," Rays baseball operations president Matt Silverman said. "And it was a question of when, not if, he was going to manage."

Father supposedly knows best, and Mike Cash was the first to get a sense that Kevin was a wee bit more into the game than the average kid.

"If we had an 11 o'clock Little League game, Kevin was dressed at 7," Mike said. "That was just him. I didn't ever have to say 'Go get your stuff' or 'Lay it out to be ready for tomorrow.' And when we got to the park it was all about baseball — let's go get a couple cuts, let's go hit a few grounders."

Mike Cash played his last pro game in 1978, a year after Kevin was born, having reaching Triple-A after going from the Giants to the Phillies, though blocked by a guy named Mike Schmidt, and settled the family in Tampa, Patsy's hometown. (Mike's older brother, Ron, also played, getting to the big leagues with the Tigers in 1973-74.)

Though Kevin has no memory of seeing Mike play, he heard enough and saw enough to know baseball was the family business.

"I wanted to be my dad," Kevin said. "As soon as I was of the age to play baseball, that's what it was. It was just kind of the natural thing I wanted to do."

Soon, the Cashes were spending every night and their weekend days at the Northside fields, barely a mile from the house. Mike coached games and threw endless batting practice. Patsy staffed the concession stand.Kevin and younger brother Justin hit, fielded grounders and played catch until someone made them go home.

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"I basically lived here," Kevin said during a recent visit back. "We'd do our homework and then it was off to the ballpark whether we had a game that night or not. ... If we weren't playing, I'd jump in the cage with another team."

Cash family

Kevin Cash bats at the 1989 Little League World Series.

Though — in Mike's words — "a little pudgy guy," Kevin turned out to be a pretty good little ballplayer, making a name for himself by age 11. The highlight of his youth-league career, by far, was playing on the 1989 Northside team that made it to the Little League World Series in Williamsport, Pa. That he did so as one of only three 11-year-olds on a team of 12s, and played a key role, was telling.

"Even as one of the little guys he still was one that people respected," said Mike LaBarbera, who played on that team and remains friends with Cash. "He was a team leader even at that age."

And that continued, as Cash added to his cache of information with ideas from coaches Frank Permuy at Gaither and Mike Martin at Florida State, and in the majors from Terry Francona and John Farrell, plus Lou Piniella, Maddon and others.

"I always had the inkling he was going to do something like (coaching) if he didn't make it as a player," Permuy said. "He always asked a lot of questions, was always inquiring about what we were doing and why we were doing that. Back in the day we just did it, but he always wanted to know.

"And he was basically the captain of the infield, always moving guys around, getting guys in positions for cutoffs and such. ... He was like a coach on the field. That's the way he was."

Wrongs turn out right

There was a lot that had to go right for Cash to get as far as he did — playing in the Little League and College World Series and being part of two teams (2007 Red Sox, 2009 Yankees) that won the major-league Series.

Cash family

Kevin Cash was motivated by not initially making the Gaither High School baseball team.

And it helped that a few things went wrong.

• Still undersized as he got to Gaither High — "He didn't have hair on his legs until he was 17," Mike offered — Kevin, despite the family pedigree and youth-league success, didn't make the fall ball team with the rest of his buddies in 10th grade.

"There wasn't a lot said on the way home that day," Mike recalled. "I kind of felt that would be a changing time for him — he was either going to go gung-ho, or say, 'Dad, I'm ready to give it up.' ... But boy he really turned it on from that day."

Motivated "a ton" to improve, Kevin worked relentlessly in the batting cages at Northside, some nights alongside the guys from the Gaither team — "That was embarrassing," he said — and made the Cowboys squad in the spring.

• Cash grew, became stronger and "got good again" by his junior year at Gaither, then was playing middle infield the following summer for Permuy's American Legion Post 111 team when he made his most fortuitous mistake ever.

They were a win away from advancing to the state tournament when Cash made an uncharacteristic error that cost them the game.

With that team done, he was able to keep plans he otherwise would have broken to attend a Florida State camp, during which he impressed enough to be offered a scholarship, and committed quickly to the tradition-rich Seminoles, for whom uncle Ron had played.

"We were devastated not advancing," Kevin said. "But selfishly it worked out for me. "

• Cash was confident he was going to be drafted after a solid junior year at FSU, then "crushed" to not be one of the 1,474 players selected.

Hoping to improve his standing as a senior, Cash headed to the Cape Cod League for the summer of 1999, leading to the serendipitous sequence that got him signed with the Blue Jays — and in the major leagues a little more than three years later.

When one of the catchers on his Falmouth team got hurt and the other was sick, Cash, who'd been playing mostly third base as he did at FSU, volunteered to go behind the plate. He caught a couple runners stealing and, more important, the eye of longtime scout Tim Wilken, who signed him for $60,000.

He worked his way to prospect status ("Definitely our catcher of the future," then-Jays GM J.P. Ricciardi said) and onto the fast track — perhaps too fast, Cash says now — to the big leagues, making his debut in September 2002 and the 2004 opening day start.

Those were two highlights of a career that included two World Series rings and an impressive 2008 run with the Red Sox as knuckleballer Tim Wakefield's personal catcher, but also considerable frustration as he constantly shuttled between the majors and minors.

That limited opportunity was a prime reason Cash started thinking about going into coaching, and his lack of big-league success — highlighted by a .183 career average — helped develop his communication skills and sense of understanding, allowing him to relate to players in good times and bad.

"I think that helped a lot," Cash said. "I feel like I've had enough success at certain levels to where I'm able to communicate with our superstars, but I'm also sensitive to how frustrating this game can be."

'Expected the worst'

While Cash's baseball career eventually fell into place, he faced some serious drama — and trauma — along the way.

Cash family

Pictured, from left: Daughters Camden and Ella. Back row, Kevin, son J.D. and wife Emily.

Most emotionally gripping was the birth of his and wife Emily's first child, Camden. Doctors detected early in Emily's pregnancy something was wrong, leading to what Kevin called some "panicked and stressful" days during his 2006 spring with the Devil Rays. "We expected the worst but got way better," Emily said.

Camden was born that August with two holes in her heart. Though able to go home after six days in the neonatal intensive care unit, she would need open heart surgery at 17 months — right after the Red Sox won the '07 Series — at All Children's in St. Petersburg. Her diagnosis of congenital heart disease requires annual checkups, but otherwise she is a robust and active 8-year-old, with a younger sister, Ella, 7, and brother, J.D., who turns 2 next week.

"It was a very emotional rollercoaster for some time," Emily said. "It's something we can breathe easier now, but it's always there. It's something we will have to always think about. Not worry, but think about. ... But she is pretty awesome, a wonderful little girl."

Kevin's own recklessness at 16 nearly killed him when he took the Bronco he'd gotten for his birthday five days earlier over to Northside and flipped it in the parking lot. "How either one of us made it out alive was amazing, let alone walked out of there," said buddy Matt Siegel, who was in the passenger seat. "We were going to hit, so there were baseballs everywhere. Somehow we climbed out."

Not long after that incident, Patsy and Mike finalized a divorce, the split staggering Kevin and leading him to admittedly act out a bit. "It was a pretty devastating blow at the time," he said. "I grew a couple wild hairs and started to do some dumb stuff."

Cash had another scare at FSU, struck on the left sunglass-covered eye by a batting practice ball off John-Ford Griffin's bat. FSU coach Mike Martin gets a good laugh now telling how Cash bellowed from the trainer's table "Don't you change that lineup!" but called it "the most frightening thing" he'd seen.

Cash still has scars, but escaped with no serious damage, and came back less than two weeks later to hit a huge homer in the College World Series.

"He was probably the toughest kid both mentally and physically," Martin said. "He handled adversity so well."

'It's a fairy tale'

Cash is correct in insisting that the chance to be a major-league manager, especially given his age and lack of experience, is already special enough. But getting to do so in his hometown — one they left for Cleveland two years ago without knowing when, or if, they'd ever get back — makes it so much more so.

WIL VRAGOVIC | Times

Rays manager Kevin Cash stands for a portrait at the Northside Little League Fields in Tampa. Cash, a Tampa native, played on this field between the ages of 10 and 12, and in 1989, with the team that went to the Little League World Series.

The Cashes are settling into a new house in the same Westchase area where they first bought a condo a decade ago, reuniting almost daily with old friends, or friends of friends, and enjoying the benefits of having family close to help with the kids.

"It seems like a little bit of a surprise around every corner and at every stop," Kevin said.

Going back to the Northside complex off Dale Mabry Highway, where Cash's name is among those on a monument saluting that 1989 Little League World Series team, was "a surreal experience." A visit to Gaither last week to take part in ceremonies renaming the field for Permuy was another trip back in time, though also a reminder of how far he has come, as the daughter of a classmate was wearing a Rays T-shirt with Cash's name and No. 16 on the back.

"It's just amazing," Emily said. "I've used so many of the same adjectives over and over, and I can't find that one I really want. It's just a blessing.

"It's a fairy tale. I think that's the best way to put it now, that it really happened the way it did."

Even Kevin wouldn't question that.

Contact Marc Topkin at mtopkin@tampabay.com. Follow @TBTimes_Rays.