Cashman, born Dennis Minogue, grew up in northern Manhattan on the border between Inwood and Washington Heights and was a Giants fan as a youth. When the Giants moved to San Francisco in his mid teens, Dennis went right with them, only becoming a Mets fan in 1972 when his beloved Willie Mays was traded back to New York.
“Willie Mays was always my favorite player,” he recalls. “But I remember the baseball culture of the time. After dinner, we’d all go stand on the street corner and have a (soda) or an ice cream, get the papers for the box scores, and talk about which of our three teams was the best,” he remembers fondly. Conversation invariably turned as well to which of the three teams’ standout center fielders was the best: Mickey Mantle, Willie Mays, or Duke Snider, future Hall of Famers all.
As a young man, Minogue was pretty talented on the pitcher’s mound. The young righty signed with the Detroit Tigers and pitched in the minors in 1960 before shifting to music exclusively. At the time, he was a member of a Doo-Wop group called the Chevrons, and he even missed their appearance on “Dick Clark’s American Bandstand” because he was pitching at Spring Training.
He made six albums with his folk-rock duo, Cashman and West, and formed his own record company as well. He co-wrote “Sunday Will Never Be the Same,” a top-10 hit for Spanky and Our Gang. He had great success as the producer of classic hits by Jim Croce, including “Operator, (That’s Not the Way It Feels)” “Time in a Bottle,” “Bad, Bad Leroy Brown,” “I Got a Name,” and “I’ll Have to Say I Love You In a Song.”