Cash Morgan is glad he listened to his friends by taking their advice and returning to Ozark’s baseball team this spring, after a year's hiatus.
“All of my friends were pestering me about it. We'd been playing together since we were in the fourth grade, so they all wanted me to come back and I couldn't say no,” Morgan said. “I didn't need a break (a year ago) and don't think I should have taken a break. I wasn't thinking straight.”
Morgan locked down the Tigers’ first base job in pre-season practices while also being welcomed back by coach Justin Sundlie.
"We're happy to have him back,” Sundlie said. “Whatever happened last year, I'm just glad he's back with us. He grew up playing with this group. He’s an awesome kid and a hard worker.”
Morgan previously was at catcher, second base and the outfield. He’s made a smooth transition to first and is drawing closer toward regaining his hitting stroke with each at-bat.
“I haven't completely got it back, yet,” Morgan said. “It's not really the timing I'm having trouble with, it's seeing the ball well. I was really good at seeing it before I took a year off. I'm trying to get back to that. It's on and off. One day you're on, one day you're off.”
“He grinds out at-bats,” Sundlie said. “He's aggressive in the right counts, laying off the pitches he needs to lay off, so he's getting good pitches to hit. He gets a ton of two-strike hits because he has the approach he's going to put the ball in play.”
Morgan’s mentor is his older sister, Nya, a former record-setting slugging catcher for Ozark’s softball team.
“Let's see if I can get better at hitting than she was — I don't think I'll get there. She was pretty legit,” Cash said. “Me and her are best friends. She says, ‘Swing hard in case you hit it.’”
