Baltimore's Can't-Miss Coach

Orioles first base coach Dave Cash struck out just 13 times in 1976. (By John Mcdonnell -- The Washington Post)

FORT LAUDERDALE, Fla., Feb. 22 -- He is walking with a limp, taking one slight step after another, his body hunched over but his hands and wrists strong and youthful, as are his mind and his spirit. This is what baseball does to a man. It wrecks his body but keeps his mind intact. It fills him with memories, then makes it difficult to recreate them.

Thirty years ago, this 57-year-old man had one of the most incredible seasons in major league history. Baltimore Orioles players step into the batting cage and swing and miss often during live batting practice and standing just a few feet away is Dave Cash, the man who rarely swung and missed in his entire career. During one amazing season in 1976, Cash, now Baltimore's first base coach, went to the plate 727 times for the Philadelphia Phillies and struck out just 13 times, a rate of one strikeout every 55.92 plate appearances, the 16th-best rate in the majors since 1940 and the best since 1962. Only Nellie Fox struck out fewer times (12) since 1960 among players with 504 or more at-bats. During one stretch in 1975, Cash went 48 games without a strikeout.

"That's incredible," Orioles outfielder Jay Gibbons said. "I pride myself on not striking out and I struck out 56 times. I considered that good."

It was only years later that Cash realized what he had accomplished. He knew he always made contact and that he didn't often strike out, but 13 times?

"Someone pointed it out to me," Cash said. "It wasn't something even that I discovered. I had to look back and see it. I look back on it now and I'm proud of it."

Of course, it was a different era. There hardly were any late-inning specialists and the split-fingered fastball had yet to become fashionable. Players didn't take long swooping cuts as they do now.

"A strikeout then was evil," said Bob Boone, Cash's teammate in 1976 and now the Nationals' senior director of player personnel-assistant general manager. "You couldn't have strikeouts back then and be in the majors. Strikeouts killed the ability to turn the lineup over and if you turned that lineup over you would win the game. Strikeout guys didn't play in the league."

And nobody was better at avoiding the strikeout than Cash, who never struck out more than 36 times in a season in his 12-year major league career. But Cash wasn't always so good at making contact. In his first year in the minors, Cash, drafted out of high school by the Pittsburgh Pirates, said he learned he really knew nothing about the game. It was only until his second year in professional baseball that Cash began to learn how to avoid the strikeout.

"I struck out like everyone else in high school," Cash said. "I've always had pretty good hand and eye coordination. But when I got into pro ball and talked to guys that were more experienced, players like [Roberto] Clemente and [Willie] Stargell and guys like that they helped me out with a two-strike approach."

He learned to stay back on a breaking ball, learned to hit to the opposite field and, most importantly, he learned to step to the plate with confidence. That is why in that 1976 season he rarely appeared rattled.

"He was very quick," said Billy DeMars, Cash's hitting coach in 1976. "Some people can react quickly and see the ball really well. His swing was short and quick."

DeMars and Cash worked together often that season, and a hitless game would not often deter the second baseman. DeMars had a saying that if you were 0 for 50, you need to think you're going to get a hit on that 51st time at the plate. Cash did not need to be convinced. He walked to the plate, with no limp quite yet, and swung those powerful arms and wrists and made contact.

"He was very confident when he hit," DeMars said. "He knew he could hit."