Two dreams launched in Class-A Hagerstown
Josh Holliday and his roommate bought a couch from the thrift store and an inflatable chair from who knows where.
They had a TV, too. No stand; it sat on the floor. No cable either.
But the roomies playing their first full seasons of minor-league baseball back in 2000 found they didn't need much more. Even though they were in
Hagerstown, Maryland, a quaint but quiet industrial town hundreds of miles from their homes, they never wanted for something to do.
“We would talk a lot of baseball,” said Holliday, now the baseball coach at Oklahoma State. “He was one of the few people I could find that would sit there and talk about everything all night long.
“He had that 24-7 kind of baseball intrigue.” He still does. Holliday's roommate that summer? Kevin Cash. Tuesday evening, Cash will lead the Tampa Bay Rays into the World Series. A year after leading Tampa Bay to the playoffs for the first time since 2013, the Rays manager has them on the verge of a world championship.
None of this comes as a surprise to Holliday. He doesn't remember Cash ever saying he wanted to be a bigleague manager, but Holliday could tell his teammate and roommate had a mind for the game.
“The guys that were constantly talking about baseball and thinking about baseball and questioning baseball in a way where they wanted to learn more, they really stood out,” Holliday said. “He has that interest in baseball at a deep level.
“That was on display way back when.”
Holliday, a catcher, was drafted by Toronto out of OSU in 1999, and after spending that year in short-season ball, he moved to Class A in Hagerstown. Cash, on the other hand, had been undrafted out of Florida State in 1999. He went to the Cape Cod League and had a good enough summer that Toronto signed him.
But he arrived in
Hagerstown with a mandate from the Blue Jays — learn how to be a catcher.
Cash had played primarily third base in college, but Holliday remembers him making quick work of the transition. They talked about the position and its intricacies, but they discussed hitting even more. Adjusting to hitting with wood bats. Figuring out how to hit certain pitches.
Holliday loved trying to help, and as that summer went on, he realized he felt that way whether he was working with Cash or someone else on the team.
“I just instinctively felt a greater sense of enjoyment being at the field and kind of helping the other guys on the
team,” Holliday said. “Being in the batting cage, getting my own swings in, then flipping around and talking to guys.
“I just kind of realized there's a need. Players need for people to help them.”
Holliday grew up the son of a baseball coach — his dad, Tom, coached 26 years at OSU, the last seven as head coach — so teaching the game was always an option. But that summer in Hagerstown was when Holliday's journey to coaching college baseball took a hard turn.
He knew it was what he was meant to do, and he was ready to get started.
“So I just followed my gut, jumped in my
car in August and came back (to Stillwater) and finished school and dove right in,” said Holliday, who led the Cowboys to the 2016 College World Series. “That year for me was very meaningful, and I made the right decision.
“I did what was in my heart, and I've never looked back.”
The same could be said of Kevin Cash.
Two years after being in Hagerstown, he made his big-league debut with Toronto. He played in the majors for the next eight years, spending time with Tampa Bay, Boston, the New York Yankees, Houston and Boston again.
His playing career launched him into other baseball jobs, first advance scout for the
Blue Jays, then bullpen coach for the Indians.
Only two years after he retired from playing, the Rays hired him as manager in 2014.
Holliday, an avid watcher of Major League Baseball, has seen in Cash many of the traits that were obvious two decades ago. He has an easy rapport with players, something Holliday recognized during their minorleague days.
“We sat in the same corner of the locker room every day and enjoyed the banter,” Holliday said. “He was just super likeable.”
But Cash also has that baseball mind, a passion for mechanics and situations and statistics.
The Rays employ strategies many baseball
types see as unusual. Based on analytics, Cash will sometimes make in-game moves that aren't the norm. For example, he pulled starting pitcher Blake Snell in the fifth inning of Game 6, then pulled starter Charlie Morton in the sixth inning of Game 7 of the American League Championship Series even though both were throwing well.
The move backfired in Game 6 with the Astros rallying for victory, but it worked for the Rays in Game 7.
In both instances, however, it was true to Tampa's tenants.
“We value our process,” Cash told reporters after the series-clinching win.
Cash is a baseball nut, but he's a people person, too — and Holliday sees the mix in his old minorleague teammate.
“It seems as if he's one of the better blends of using modern data and thought processes but also combining it with some instincts and some feel for his team,” Holliday said. “Looks like he's a little bit of the best that both schools of thought have to offer.”
Even though the former teammates don't keep in regular contact, Holliday knows if he bumped into Cash, they would pick right back up where they left off in Hagerstown. They'd joke and laugh and talk baseball.
That's all they'd need now because that's all they needed then.
“I took the microwave and left him the TV when I left,” Holliday said. “That was a fair trade.”
Small appliances aside, that summer put both roommates at the start of something pretty great.