Butch Cash was ready.
A baseball player good enough as a high schooler to be named All-Metropolitan in the Washington, D.C., area, he loped onto the lush grass at the Brigham Young University field, ready to fire a ball just before the Cougars would begin that evening's battle.
The setting was right — a cozy Friday evening, the sun preparing to drift over the western mountains but still blazing enough to cast a rosy glow on the Wasatch Range a sky away.
Cash's big moment had come. The only problem was, it was arriving about four decades later than he thought it would.
Cash's toss April 30 was a ceremonial first pitch. But his college baseball career ended in 1962, before it even started. A severe knee injury suffered while playing intramural basketball during his freshman year prevented him from ever taking the field for the Cougars.
But Cash is a man of few regrets. Sure, he had hoped to play Major League baseball, but he realized even then the chances were slim. Still, with the injury, life had thrown him a huge curve ball.
He came through in the clutch by hitting the books instead of baseballs, working his way through school and picking up values and traits that would carry him to a pinnacle in the hospitality industry: president, chief executive officer and director of La Quinta Corp.
"Most young men realize at 11 or 12 they're not going to be big league baseball players. I was 20," Cash said.
"The interesting thing is I knew in my heart I wasn't going to be a big league baseball player. I may have been good enough to play college ball but not good enough to play in the big leagues. But it (the injury) was really a blessing in disguise. I knew then I'd have to find some other way to make a living."
His living now is leading his own team, some 7,000 strong, at more than 370 La Quinta Inns and Inns & Suites across 33 states. And he acknowledges that at several points along life's path, from sports to BYU to lessons learned through The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, he picked up the tools to succeed.
Coming from what he calls "a very humble background," Cash found high school sports as a way to shine and hoped to ply his way onto a college baseball team.
BYU came calling, and the All-Metro shortstop was headed west.
"When I came to college, I would say the major focus was on baseball and the second major focus was on academics so I could stay eligible to play baseball," he said.
The injury, and the six-month recovery from subsequent surgery, changed all that. But what he had learned in baseball, football and basketball lingered. The ability to try new things and succeed at them remained.
"Sports gave me a confidence that, hey, I can do that," he said. "And being good at sports opened the doors here. I probably would have never come to Brigham Young University without the opportunity to play baseball."
With baseball gone, Cash started concentrating on accounting, but he had to borrow and work to get the money to get through school. He would marry during his junior year, and wife Judy also worked to help make ends meet.
"You look back in hindsight and think it was a traumatic thing and turned your whole life around," Cash said of the injury. "But at the time you were going through it, it's like, well, we just started the new semester, and I've got to pay the bills. I had to find out a different way to pay for college and started focusing on other things to do with my career."
It helped that the competitor inside him, forged on myriad fields and courts, never left.
"I did have a desire to be the best at whatever I was going to do — playing ball or being an accountant or being in business," he said.
After graduating in accounting, Cash went to work for Arthur Andersen back East. He moved up the ladder quickly but wasn't enthralled with technical accounting. "What I liked about public accounting was working with people and solving problems," he said.
His biggest account was Marriott Corp., and, like BYU in baseball, they successfully recruited Cash. Starting as controller in 1974, he eventually was put in charge of procurement and distribution for the company's fast-food and coffee-shop business.
After 18 years at Marriott, Red Roof Inns came calling. The strategy there was to allow the largest investor to liquidate their investment by selling the company, which happened four years later when Accor took over.
La Quinta would be next.
"I'm actually a better executive growing and developing things than selling things. In my career, I've acquired over 30 companies, including three former New York Stock Exchange companies.
"I've always been blessed with good leadership skills. People like working with me, being around me. So every step along the way, I always thought I could do the next step."
The La Quinta board made it clear that the company's next major step was to grow, but Cash had some fixing-up to do first.
Among the changes since he took over are instituting what he calls a strong management team: seven new executives among the top eight and more than 25 new ones among the top 50.
But management changes aside, Cash wanted to institute values he had picked up. One developed in him early on, during his sports days. "I'm my own worst critic. Not that it's negative, but I'm never satisfied with what I do. The real competition is inside with what I do.
"Never be satisfied. No matter how successful you are, just add another step on the ladder, whether it be customer satisfaction or profitability or whatever it is," he said.
"Another is integrity in everything we do. The way we like to think about it is, if whatever I do or any people who work for the company do will be on the front page of the newspaper tomorrow, is that going to embarrass you or the company or your family? If it is, don't do it."
The final piece was instilling a sense that family takes precedence. "If families are priority No. 1, you'll have happier team members and happier employers," he said.
"I think the thing that we've tried to do and what I think will be of most lasting importance is the culture we're trying to create. We want to walk the talk. We want people to know we do operate with the highest integrity that we can, that we're never satisfied and that families are most important. And all of those values, as you can tell, I learned here at BYU or learned from the church.
"If you're going to be an effective CEO, the culture you create and the kind of people you attract to work with you is what's going to be lasting. Marketing programs change, advertising changes, your properties change, but it's the culture that's permanent."
Using those values as linchpins, Cash is looking to rejuvenate a company that once had cash flow of $250 million but saw it shrink to $150 million last year as the effects of 9/11 wore on. La Quinta also wants to add about 50 properties annually and wants to make a few acquisitions. The overall goal is to make La Quinta an international hotel company in a few years.
Cash has had to decentralize La Quinta — "You can't run a company with decisions made in Dallas," he said — and tried to demonstrate his values through his actions rather than just words. Mistakes will happen, but he said he won't let a lack of integrity cause them. Word of that kind of thing could spread and erode the company.
"Informal communications in a company is more important than the formal ones," he said.
"The important thing is to be consistent between the words and the actions. Over a long period of time, you start to attract people who are attracted to those values. If you like to party hearty, live the high life; if you have those values, that's fine, but this is not the company you want to work for."
As for himself, Cash is figuring to work for La Quinta for a while. He said he is thankful that he's been able to mentor some folks and realizes his lot in life has been good.
"Only in America could a poor kid from the wrong side of the tracks have an opportunity to do the things that I've done. And there's no question BYU had a major influence on that, the church had a major influence on that, and my family had a major influence on that."
Cash also has had a bit of an influence on BYU, which incidentally is where his three oldest daughters attended college and met their husbands. Cash was involved in the first board of advisers for the BYU School of Accountancy and was an adviser for the School of Management for several years, and he's chipped in when BYU needed fund-raising help.
Oh, and that first throw on the BYU diamond? Right on target. The four-decade wait was finally over, and to appreciative applause from the crowd, the man who is never satisfied nonetheless flashed a contented, youthful grin.
E-mail: bwallace@desnews.com