1980 Topps Baseball Player Profile: Dave Cash

A dependable hitter and fielder who knew how to make contact and win, this week’s profile is about Dave Cash:

Cash was born in 1948 in Utica, New York, and was the second of three brothers. At Utica’s Proctor High School, he starred in three sports: baseball, basketball, and football. Along with batting over .400 in both his junior and senior years, he averaged 24 points a game on the basketball court, which got the attention of Syracuse University. But when the school that was losing both future coach Jim Boeheim and future Hall of Fame guard Dave Bing to graduation took their time making Cash an offer, he turned his focus to baseball.

In June of 1966, the Pittsburgh Pirates picked Cash in the fifth round of the amateur draft, assigning him to rookie ball in Salem. In 1967, he moved to Single-A ball in Gastonia, leading the league in hits and finishing fourth in batting average at .335. The next season he was again with Salem, now a Single-A team, where he did enough, along with some time in the Florida Instructional League, to earn a promotion to Triple-A in 1969. Playing for the Columbus Jets, Cash led the International League in triples, while leading his team in batting average, earning a call-up to the Pirates in September, where he hit .279 in 18 games. The following season, he started the season with Columbus again, but after 35 games, he was again called up to the majors, this time for good.

Cash had moved to second base in Triple-A after playing shortstop prior to that, but the Pirates happened to have a guy named Bill Mazeroski (a future Hall of Famer) at second, and while he was at the tail end of his career at the age of 34, the eight-time Gold Glove winner was still the starter. Cash, at 22, got some playing time, hitting .314 in 64 games, including six triples. Pittsburgh made it to the playoffs and were impressed enough with Cash to keep him on the playoff roster, but the Bucs were swept by the Cincinnati Reds. The following season, Cash was still in competition with Mazeroski for playing time, but was showing why he belonged, hitting nearly .350 as of early June. The Pirates found ways to get him in the lineup, as he played some third base and shortstop as well, and Cash also became part of a historic moment. According to this SABR profile, on September 1, 1971, Cash was one of nine Black players in the starting lineup, the first all-Black lineup in MLB history. Cash started at third, contributing an RBI in the team’s 10-7 win over the Chicago Cubs.

He ended up hitting .289 in 123 games that season, as Pittsburgh made it to the playoffs again in 1971. Cash hit lead-off in every postseason game, hitting .421 in the National League Championship Series, as the Pirates beat the Giants, and then helped Pittsburgh defensively as the team won the 1971 World Series over the Baltimore Orioles. It would be Cash’s only World Series victory. In 1972, Mazeroski took on a more limited role, allowing Cash to become the starting second baseman, only to have to share time with rookie Rennie Stennett. Cash played 99 games, hitting .282, and while the Bucs again made the playoffs, they lost the NLCS to the Reds. In 1973, for the first time since 1954, the Pirates were without Roberto Clemente, who died in a plane crash on New Year’s Eve, 1972, while flying to Nicaragua to help with relief efforts after an earthquake. The team was in mourning, and Cash had lost a friend, per the SABR profile:

Cash continued to share time with Stennett in 1973, playing in 116 games and hitting .271. The Pirates finished in third place, and after the season, with Stennett starting to establish himself and Willie Randolph coming up through the minors, the Bucs decided to move Cash, trading him to the Philadelphia Phillies for pitcher Ken Brett (the brother of Hall of Famer George Brett). The trade seemed to work out for both players, as each was named an All-Star in 1974, a first for each of them, and the first of three consecutive for Cash.

That season, along with his All-Star nod, Cash would lead the majors in at-bats (the first of three seasons in a row), hit .300, and bring a winning attitude, helping the Phillies move from last in 1973 to third in 1974, as future Hall of Famer Mike Schmidt began to show his star potential with a league-leading 36 home runs. In 1975, the Phillies took another step forward, finishing in second, with Cash collecting an MLB-leading 213 hits, hitting .305, and setting an MLB record with 699 at-bats, one that would be broken five years later by Willie Wilson. Then, in 1976, Philadelphia improved again, winning the NL East, as Cash lead the National League in triples with 12 and hit .284. In the playoffs, the Phillies met the buzz saw that was the Big Red Machine, getting swept by the team that would go on to sweep the Yankees in the World Series.

Cash would become a free agent after the 1976 season and decided to sign a five-year contract with the Montreal Expos. Cash would play the following three seasons with the Expos. In 1977, he hit .289, with 91 runs and 42 doubles, but the following season his stats declined across the board. During spring training before the 1979 season, Expos manager Dick Williams picked Rodney Scott as the starting second baseman, so Cash’s playing time fell off, but he did hit .321 in 76 games. With Scott set at second base for the following season, the Expos traded Cash to the San Diego Padres, where he would play his final season, hitting a career-low .227 in 130 games.

Over his 12-year career, Cash had a .283 batting average and 1,571 hits, but what was most impressive was his ability to make contact. Across 5,554 at-bats during his career, he only struck out 309 times. In 1976, he struck out only 13 times in 666 at-bats, including 223 plate appearances without striking out once, the longest streak in the expansion era (since 1961) and the second-longest in MLB history.

After a few years in corporate America, including at an investment firm and selling cars, Cash returned to the game of baseball. From 1988-95, he coached and briefly managed in the Phillies’ minor league system, then joined the Phillies as a coach in 1996. Following that, he moved to the American League and the Baltimore Orioles, working in various capacities, including as a minor league manager and coach, and also as a first base coach for Baltimore in 2005-06. He returned to managing in 2007 in his hometown of Utica with the Brewmasters of the New York State League, followed by a couple of season as a hitting coach. As of 2016, Cash was living in the Tampa area, helping his grandson’s baseball team, and here’s a 2021 interview with him about his experience with the Pirates in the early ‘70s.

Set Profile: 1960 Nu-Card Baseball Hi-Lites

As someone who’s a huge fan of sports history - and particularly baseball history - this 72-card set is right up my alley. Issued by the Nu-Card Company, the cards, designed like newspapers, cover notable moments throughout the sport’s history.

The set’s card topics stretch back 100 years to June of 1859 to note when the box score was developed by a reporter, all the way to September of 1959, covering a number of awards for the season.

The postcard-size cards came in two versions - one red and black with trivia questions on the back, while cards #1-18 also came in a black-only version with a blank back, and are considered more valuable. One of the more notable cards may be card #26, with Eddie Gaedel, a man with dwarfism who had his only MLB at-bat in 1951. The card served as his “rookie” card, even if it was nearly a decade after his debut.

The most expensive player cards seem to be the Babe Ruth (three different) or Mickey Mantle (two different) cards. Meanwhile, last month, a complete ungraded set sold on eBay for $360, or $5 per card.