Recent Acquisition: Dave Cash

I wasn't aware of Dave Cash until I read Mike Schmidt's book, Clearing the Bases.  I thought the book was great -- his story of his time in baseball was interesting to me as a fan, he has a very personal take on Pete Rose, and I like his perspective on what has gone down in baseball since his time as a player.  Not everyone is as in tune with Schmidt, though -- the book doesn't get very good reviews (it only has a 3.32 rating at Goodreads, based on 50 ratings).

Pacific Senior Baseball card of Dave Cash (not a recent acquisition).

I wasn't born until 1975, so Schmidt's time with the Phillies pre-dates my existence a bit.  I only know about the 1970s Phillies what I've learned over the years, and after they won the World Series in 1980, players who weren't on that team may have been largely forgotten.  Dave Cash was an important part of the Phillies in the mid-1970s, even if people weren't talking about him by the 1980s.  Schmidt writes about how important Cash was to his development, as a teammate and especially as a fellow infielder -- Cash played 3B sometimes, but with Schmidt at third, Cash played 2B for the Phillies. 

Cash was an All-Star all three of those years with the Phillies, and led the NL in hits with 213 in 1975.  Those years were the start of the Phillies drive to the World Series, with 1976 being the first of three consecutive NL East divisional titles.  Both for his impact as a mentor to Schmidt and as a part of the Phillies drive to the postseason, I wanted to add a Cash card in his prime with the Phillies to my collection.  I had settled on wanting the 1976 card, in non-slabbed form to add to my binder.  Above is a picture of the only card of Cash I was aware of in my collection, a Pacific card from Cash's time in the Senior Baseball league.  Today, the new card arrived, and it is already at home in my binder, right after teammate Tony Taylor.

1976 Topps Dave Cash.