Rays manager recalls north Tampa roots

Kevin Cash tries not to dwell on the fact that he’s in the second year of managing his hometown Major League Baseball team.

Instead, he separates his duties of being the skipper of the Tampa Bay Rays with the nostalgia of growing up in Lutz, playing in Northside Little League, attending Gaither High School and being a one-time catcher for the Rays in 2005.

While he admitted “there’s a lot of excitement” in having the opportunity to return home a year ago, he noted that it’s more important to have an MLB managerial job, regardless of where it’s located.

“Whether you’re in the town or not, there’s 30 of those jobs that are pretty prestigious positions, and it’s an honor to be there,” said Cash, 38. “But, it does make it a little bit sweeter, and you can’t deny the fact it gets you back home.

“You factor in that it brought my family back to my hometown, and back to a bunch of family and friends. That just adds to everything,” he said.

Over the years, Cash, the youngest manager in the MLB, has proven he’s willing to move anywhere to work in professional baseball.

After an eight-year MLB career as a journeyman catcher that sent him to Toronto, Boston, New York and Houston, Cash became a bullpen coach for the Cleveland Indians, working under manager Terry Francona in 2013 and 2014.

With his playing days finished and his coaching career in full swing, Cash wasn’t sure how long it would take before he’d be able to permanently return to Florida— where the bulk of his family and his wife’s family live.

Cash still recalls his younger days growing up in the Valley Ranch Drive neighborhood, situated across from Lake Park.

“I remember when my parents moved to the neighborhood in Lutz, it was like a one street cul-de-sac, and there were boys everywhere,” Cash said. “We had pickup football games, pickup basketball, baseball games every day. It was just a pretty cool neighborhood to grow up in, because there were so many kids our age that we could go out there, and have a complete game with.”

Even back in the late ’80s and early ’90s, the Tampa youth baseball scene was rife with talent.

In 1989, 12-year-old Cash played second base for the Northside Little League team that reached the 43rd Little League World Series, which then consisted of the top four little league teams from both the United States and the rest of the world.

From the time Cash attended (and graduated) Gaither High from 1993 to 1997, 31 players from Tampa were drafted to pro ball clubs directly from the high school ranks.

“It was a youth hotbed,” said Cash, who played college baseball at Florida State. “There were just a lot of good players coming out of that area…and the competition was always very healthy. When you look at when that age group got to high school baseball, you started to see that there were really good high school players that were either getting pro contracts or opportunities to go play college baseball.

“We’re biased, because we think Florida baseball is great, but we get to play year-round where some other states obviously don’t,” Cash said.

Despite having a father, Mike, who played minor league baseball, Cash never felt pressure to participate in the sport growing up, often playing with his brother, Justin, as much as possible.

“Playing as a little leaguer was the highlight of (our) day—going to practice, playing those weekend or weekday night games. We just really enjoyed it,” Cash said.

“We just always wanted to play. We lived at the Northside Little League Park.”

Published March 9, 2016