Norm Cash

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1959 Topps

Norman Dalton Cash (Stormin' Norman)

Bats Left, Throws Left
Height 6' 0", Weight 190 lb.
School San Angelo Junior College, Sul Ross State University
Debut June 18, 1958
Final Game August 6, 1974
Born November 10, 1934 in Justiceburg, TX USA
Died October 12, 1986 in Beaver Island, MI USA

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[edit] Biographical Information

Norm Cash hit 377 home runs in a 17-year-major league career, mostly with the Detroit Tigers. He is best remembered for his great performance in 1961, an expansion year, when he hit .361 with 41 home runs.

Something often overlooked was "Stormin' Norman's" defensive prowess. Though not tall and rangy for a first-baseman, he was quick and sure-handed -- an especially deadly fielder chasing foul pop-ups behind first base. As was obvious to any Tiger fan, this guy was a big kid at heart and really enjoyed playing the game. If given no other alternative, he likely would have played for just bread and water.

Not unlike many sluggers, he struck out his share of times.

"Pro-rated at 500 at-bats a year - that means that for two years out of the fourteen I played, I never even touched the ball." - Norm Cash

Oddly enough, Cash's memory has probably been hurt by his outrageously good 1961 season, when he hit .361 with 41 home runs. It was his best year, and it came shortly before the second dead-ball era, when league stats went down sharply. His drop in batting average to .243 (a decline of .118) in 1962 is the largest ever for a batting champion. He did manage to slug 39 homers that year.

It became common to think of Cash as more or less a single season star, rather than a continual league leader. While it is true that he never again came close to the Adjusted OPS+ of 201 that he had in 1961, nevertheless his career OPS+ of 139 puts him exactly equal with Reggie Jackson at # 80 on the all-time list. The most similar player to Cash is Gil Hodges who has an OPS+ of 120, but while Hodges is constantly close to getting enough votes for enshrinement in the Hall of Fame, Cash gets no attention.

Cash, whose personality was marked by candor and humor, confessed in later years that he used corked bats, but throughout his career, not just the magical 1961 season. Corked bats are illegal in baseball, but there are questions about whether they help improvement. Players seeking an edge have broken the rule for decades. (Bart Giamatti, whose short tenure as commissioner of baseball is remembered for banning Pete Rose, encouraged a fellow Yale professor to write a small, but terrific book. His conclusion was that a corked bat was a marginal substitution of mass for speed that didn't amount to much. See The Physics of Baseball, Robert K. Adair.)

Cash missed the 1957 season due to military service.

Cash was a popular player with Detroit fans, and remained in the area after he retired. He drowned while on vacation at Beaver Island, Michigan, apparently falling in the water while returning to his boat late in the evening.