Cahill adjusts to life on baseball's sidelines

UMass-Lowell Hall of Fame calls

Jon Cahill works out in the infield during spring training with the Anaheim Angels in 2001. (ANAHEIM ANGELS)

Jon Cahill has always been one of those guys where the diamond was his best friend, even if the feeling wasn't always mutual.

At Peabody High School and the University of Massachusetts at Lowell, he essentially worked two jobs on the field: full-time slick middle infielder, full-time flame-throwing pitcher.

At UMass-Lowell, he never missed a game: 185 straight, including 184 starts. By the time he graduated from college in 2001, he was the school's career leader in singles (186), doubles (66), and runs scored (194), totals that will carve out a nice little spot for him in UMass-Lowell's Hall of Fame on May 13.

But when he looks back on all the stops he made along his baseball odyssey, it seems like college was ages ago. Now 30, Cahill is managing the Traverse City (Mich.) Beach Bums in the independent Frontier League.

"It all goes by so fast," he said. "It still hasn't settled in."

He was signed as a free agent by the Anaheim Angels following his senior season at UMass-Lowell, and the Angels started him out with the Class A Colonels in Cedar Rapids, Iowa.

He spent about a year and a half there, working, learning, and doing essentially anything managers and coaches asked, even catching for pitchers in the bullpen because there was only one catcher on the roster.

In the middle of a playoff race in 2002, the Colonels were in such a pinch that manager Todd Claus - now the scouting director for the Red Sox - asked Cahill to play all nine positions . . . in one game.

To this day he still remembers the voice of the public address announcer.

"Now playing shortstop . . ."

"Now playing center field . . .

"Now catching . . . "

"It was awesome," Cahill said.

He went into spring training in 2003 thinking he'd be bumped up to a better Angels' Class A affiliate, the Rancho Cucamonga (Calif.) Quakes, but a spot never opened up on the roster.

Eventually the phone rang that April for him to join another Angels affiliate, the Arkansas Travelers in the Class AA Texas League, but Cahill knew it was just a courtesy, a chance for him to get a taste of double-A baseball.

"At 26, I had an idea that my shot at affiliated baseball was over, but I still had work to do," he said.

That's one thing Cahill couldn't stand. If you were better than him, fine. If your arm was stronger, your glove was slicker, your curveball was nastier, fine.

But he couldn't stand being outworked. That's why he played all the games at UMass-Lowell.

When he left the Angels system, he played for the Frontier League's Wild Things in Washington, Pa., and missed only three games in two seasons.

"I worked my butt off at everything," Cahill said. "I wasn't the fastest guy. I wasn't the most talented guy. But I worked every day on the field to be the best that I could."

When his playing career ended in 2004, the Frontier League's Ohio Valley Redcoats - a team that split its home games between two fields in Ohio and one in Indiana for the 2005 season - gave him a shot as an assistant coach. He won the coach of the year award. Two years later, he took a job as a hitting coach back with the Beach Bums, and found himself in the boss's chair a year later when the manager left for a job in the Brewers organization.

He's still a few months away from the start of his second season as manager, but every now and then Cahill gets the itch. It's kind of hard to avoid when you see guys on the field every day playing the game you still love.

"I think that's the hard part about being a coach," he said. "No other players will play the way you played."

Julian Benbow can be reached at jbenbow@globe.com.