YES Network personality Gracie Cashman, daughter of Yankees GM Brian Cashman, takes a time out for some Q&A with Post columnist Steve Serby.
Q: How much fun is hosting “The Story of My Number” on YES?
A: It’s so much fun. Something that I had a window into growing up is that this is their job, and obviously their career is like a big part of their life, the way it is with everyone’s. We used to ask my dad all these questions, and we still do actually. He came to visit me in Chicago a couple of months ago and my brother (Teddy) ended up not making it to dinner and we were like, “If you had to pick one player on the roster to put in Teddy’s seat right now, who would it be?” Like, “Who would you let babysit?” Things like that, just to kind of get a better sense as to who they are. I think it’s really fun to kind of get to chat with them about the more personal side of their lives and then see a little more of their personality. It’s interesting to me to see how people perceive my dad based on how he does press conferences versus who he is as a person.
Q: The No. 5: the number of World Series rings your father has won.
A: (Laugh). We flipped it! He’s good at what he does. He’s the best at what he does, I think. If you were judging by how many rings you have then he’s the ringleader.
Q: The No. 10: You were 10 when you played the title role in the musical “Annie.”
A: That was kind of my foray into the theater world.
Gracie Cashman opens up to The Post about her life around the Yankees. Michelle Farsi
Q: You’re now working on Season 3 of your show. Joe Girardi, Deuce McBride and Stephon Marbury are three you’ve filmed so far. Why not Brian Cashman?
A: I would love to do Brian Cashman. Brian Cashman has to agree to do the show. … I don’t think anyone’s asked him (laugh).
Q: Why don’t you ask him?
A: That’s above my pay grade. I don’t find guests for the show!
Q: How do you think he would do on that show?
A: I think he’d do well. He doesn’t have a number, so that would be a little tricky. But we could find them for him.
Q: Five is his number.
A: So true. But what if by the time his episode comes out it’s 6?
Q: Do you have a favorite number?
A: I like 7. I was born on Oct. 7.
Q: Do you have a favorite number story?
A: Tino Martinez had a good one. He had like the craziest day, it was his birthday, he was traded to the Yankees and his daughter (Victoria) was born. And then having the press just ask you only about how you feel about your job transition.
Q: Do you take things from other actors?
A: Oh yeah. What do they say? Good artists borrow, great artists steal. Cynthia Erivo said in an interview that she creates a perfume for every character that she’s wearing, so that when she’s getting into character she has kind of a sensory experience of becoming that person. I do feel that I have that, like a very smell-oriented memory (chuckle). So that’s been very helpful actually to kind of turn into someone else, like I would never wear this scent but I think this character would.
Q: What drives you?
A: I guess passion. I’ve just always wanted to do this. There’s something in me that is driving me, but I don’t really know if there’s a good word for it other than like a deep want for it.
Q: For what?
A: I don’t know (laugh). That is like the big question of life, isn’t it (laugh)?
Q: What was the favorite show you performed in?
A: “Annie” will always hold a special place in my heart because that was just like the first thing I did.
Q: How would you describe your interviewing style?
A: Well, we have amazing writers and producers, so we go through everything a lot of times to try to make sure that the order of the questions make sense, that we’re not asking anything too hard-hitting too frequently. My style is to try make everyone as relaxed as possible so that we get the truest version of them.
Gracie Cashman attends the 13th Annual Blossom Ball at The Pierre Hotel on May 15, 2025 Getty Images
Q: Favorite interviewers?
A: We’ve actually talked quite a bit about Alex Cooper and the kind of “Call Her Daddy” style of interviewing. Because that’s not what I’m trained in. I’m an actor, I didn’t go to school for journalism. Nor did Alex Cooper. So we were kind of using the call-her-daddy style. She always has her legs up, like she’s sitting in a big comfy chair, she’s kind of like curled up, she’s got her hair in a bun. It’s very chill, and they talk about really interesting things, but I think it’s that environment that makes it so chill for people to just chitchat with her about stuff.
Q: What was it like working alongside Brooke Shields and Bridget Moynihan in “California Skate”?
A: How crazy is that? I didn’t meet Brooke Shields, but her presence was felt on set. And from what I heard from everybody she was an absolute delight. Bridget Moynihan has become like my guardian angel. I was so scared of her the first couple of days we were on set. She’s not taking s–t from anybody, she knows what she’s doing, she’s good at what she does and she’s not messing around. But she leads with such kindness still. I was actually getting a little nervous because I was doing a scene and she kept stopping to talk to the other actress, I was getting a little jealous — it was like, “Why can’t I talk to Bridget Moynihan?” She moves quickly, and she kind of darted past me and then she turned around and she said, “You’re going a good job, which is why I haven’t said anything to you.” And then after that we were great friends. We text. She texted me and asked to get coffee. Now she’s become a huge mentor. She changed how I view being a woman in the industry.
Q: How so?
A: She gives off this professional … just bad assery, that she is so good at what she does and she’s so confident in herself, and she’s not worried about appeasing everybody, and making sure everybody’s happy, which I think is so common as a woman in the industry to kind of be super bubbly, and like, (high-pitched voice), “Oh, yeah, totally no problem, what do we want?” She’s not taking s–t and she doesn’t care whether that annoys you. Or at least that’s how she comes off to me.
Gracie Cashman on the set of “The Story of My Number.” Michelle Farsi
Q: How would you sum up what it’s been like being the daughter of Brian Cashman?
A: I get that question quite a bit, and it’s kind of a difficult one to answer to be honest. I don’t have any context as to what it’s like to be the daughter of anybody else (laugh). It’s been incredible, it comes with an immense amount of privilege and access that can’t possibly go unnoticed or understated. I think when you’re a kid you don’t realize how unique of an experience you’re having. It doesn’t seem crazy when you’re little until you’re older that you’re like, “Whoa. These were all really unique and wild experiences.” But it’s been a wild ride and an amazing ride to be born into the greatest franchise in the world and be a fan for life is a blessing.
Q: How did you handle the criticism your father got over the years growing up?
A: I think it’s something nepo babies like to complain about. It’s never gonna be a burden to be born into privilege, so to act like it is in any way is bizarre to me.
Q: You were aware, like if he makes a bad trade or a bad signing…
A: He’s never made a bad trade, what are you talking about? News to me (laugh)!
Q: As a young child growing up, how did you react to that? Were you aware of it?
A: When I was little actually this girl came up to me and she said, “My dad said your dad’s getting fired.” She was a year older than me. I was in second grade or something, so what the third grader said was always right. And I went home and I was like, “This girl told me dad’s getting fired,” and my mom was very upset that this had happened. It didn’t even really bother me. When you’re that little, the concept of being fired seems normal also. You don’t have any worries, you’re just like, “Oh, dad gets fired, dad gets fired.”
Q: As you got older, did it tick you off at all?
A: Umm, yeah. He’s my dad, so I definitely get defensive of him. Every now and then people are like, “He’s bad at his job.” Like that’s not keeping me up at night. It is what it is kind of thing, you know? He’s like a duck, nothing fazes him. I did not inherit that from him. We were just talking. … I was like, “I couldn’t do your job.” And he was like, “Well, you could do it, I just don’t know if you could do it well. … You are a little snapdragon, actually, I don’t know if you could do it.” I know I couldn’t, I would go crazy.
Yankees general manager Brian Cashman Charles Wenzelberg / New York Post
Q: You could not have worked for George Steinbrenner.
A: No … actually, I don’t know. Maybe George just liked me better than he liked my dad, but he was always really nice to me (laugh). I was quite a bit cuter than he was when I was 6.
Q: In your view, what makes him good at what he does?
A: He can compartmentalize like nobody I’ve ever met. He just is not fazed by what people are saying. He’s just like, “Uhh, wish that had gone differently, on to the next, what do we do?” He’s like solution-oriented, I guess.
Q: What is the most stressed out you ever saw him?
A: One time I had a really high fever. The thermometer was broken, the fever was reading at like 106. But I was alert and talking, so I was not at 106. But he kept calling the pediatrician. He was sticking me in ice baths and the doctor was like, “I hear her talking, she can’t possibly be at 106, she’d be in a coma.”
Q: Would he be glued to a cell phone all the time at home?
A: Oh yeah. Someone quoted me when I was 3, that I said I was going to run his BlackBerry over with my mom’s car (laugh).
Q: How do you feel about your dad rappelling down a Stamford building? He was kind of a daredevil.
A: He went through a real adrenaline-junkie phase, but I think he’s over it now. He hasn’t been seeking out these dangerous activities nearly as much. I remember when he went skydiving, I was like, “I really don’t think he should do that. I think he’s going to get hurt.” And then, I got off the bus, and I got in the car at the bus stop and my mom turned around and she went, “Daddy got hurt (laugh).” He was obviously fine, thank God. He fractured his tibia and dislocated his ankle.
Brian Cashman, General Manager of the New York Yankees, rappels from one of Stamford, CTâs tallest buildings, the Landmark Building Friday, Dec. 1, 2017 for the NY POST
Q: How would you describe him as a father?
A: I think he’s a great dad. I think he’s a way more involved dad than anyone would expect. Which always weirded me out when I was little that people would be like, “Let’s give him a round of applause for being a dad.” But now I look at it and I’m like, “Wow, that actually must have been a really difficult thing for him to juggle.” I talk to him every day. So does my brother. I called him on my way here, I’ll call him after to give him my review. He’s just very … involved. He shows up, he goes to Teddy’s (Lafayette College baseball) games when he can. He’s never missed one of my shows. He’s a way more normal and goofy prankster dad that people expect him to be, I guess.
Q: Any examples?
A: My cousin’s 18th birthday, he got her fake lotto tickets. So that was evil (laugh). He tells dad jokes, he thinks he’s funny and he’s not (laugh).
Q: What’s the worst dad joke he’s ever told?
A: He likes to come up with nicknames for people, and they’re often just like … not interesting. Like I had a friend Charlie and he was like, “Chee.”
Q: Whatever comes to mind: Suzyn Waldman.
A: I feel like I have memories of her from when I was like a literal baby. Every time I see her it’s like seeing my aunt or something, like she’s so lovely.
Q: Meredith Marakovits.
I’ve only met Meredith Marakovits very briefly, and she’s a star. Her presence in real life is…shattering. You meet her in real life and you know why this woman’s on TV. Whatever IT is, she has it for sure.
YES; Meredith Marakovits
Q: Michael Kay.
A: Kayster … so many good quotes in our house have come from Michael Kay.
Q: Joe Girardi.
A: I think very much of as Mr. Girardi because his daughter (Serena) was in my grade in middle school. We would have sleepovers and he was just like her dad to me. And we also went to school together during the ’09 World Series. … We went trick-or treating together in Philadelphia during the World Series. That’s where my relationship with Nick Swisher began, my hyper fixation. I had not met him ever and I was just like, “He’s my favorite player I’ve decided. No information necessary, I just love him.” … We were all staying at the same hotel — why was I not supervised? Serena and I decided that we would give Nick Swisher all of our Halloween candy and write him like love letters. So we did, and we knocked on his door and Joanna, who’s now his wife but at the time was his girlfriend, answered the door. And she’s stunning. So things are going badly when someone’s stunning wife answers the door. This is not what we had hoped (laugh). She was like, “Oh, I’ll give this to Nick.” We were only willing to sacrifice our Halloween candy to meet Nick. But then he found us in the lobby later and gave us a huge hug, said he’d hit us a home run, and then he did. And now he’s invited to my wedding (Jan. 2, 2027).
Q: Aaron Boone.
A: On the wedding list!
Q: What do you remember about George Steinbrenner?
A: I remember him being to me like wildly kind … like a grandpa kind of figure. He knew my grandfather, my mom’s dad (Bill Bresnan). To my understanding, my grandfather was in cable, so when George decided he wanted to start a network, he went to my grandfather to try to get that beginning.
Yankees general manager Brian Cashman, left, talks with principal owner George Steinbrenner, before the Yankees spring baseball game against the Boston Red Sox at Legends Field in Tampa, Fla.,on March 22, 2006 AP
Q: Did your father ever tell you stories about Mr. Steinbrenner?
A: Many.
Q: I’m all ears.
A: You have to ask Brian Cashman for those stories (laugh). They’re not mine to share (laugh). I was born in October, and he sent a bunch of Christmas stuff when I was born to the house, so we still hang the ornaments that he sent over for congratulations.
Q: Hal Steinbrenner.
A: Also invited to my wedding. I think he’s the best owner in baseball, truly. I think that the Steinbrenners are just about the most amazing family. They value the relationships they have, they’re kind to everyone, they go out of their way to help whenever they can and they do it silently, they don’t make a big deal about the good work that they do. … They’re just good, good people.
Q: Joe Torre.
A: I actually remember when Joe Torre was no longer the manager of the Yankees, it hadn’t occurred to me that that was possible. I had understood at that point that the players moved around, but in my mind it was like, “Oh, but Joe Torre, he’s the constant.” My world was rocked. I have memories of his house during spring training in Florida. He’s got a daughter that’s a couple of years older than me and we would just play.
Q: Paul O’Neill was a guest on the show.
A: We made him his cookies. His wife sent the recipe in so we made them for him. They’re good stuff, I have to say.
Q: David Cone.
A: Perfect game … We made a dance together in the show. How cute is that?
Gracie Cashman with David Cone.
: Michelle Farsi
Q: Derek Jeter.
A: He was wonderful when I was a child, exactly what you’d want Derek Jeter to be. My brother really wanted to meet him for his birthday, so we do have a picture on Teddy’s birthday in our house where it’s me, my dad and Teddy with Derek Jeter. And he was turning two, so we thought it was very funny.
Q: Yogi Berra.
A: He was also like a Derek Jeter, just exactly what you would want someone like that to be when you meet them — so humble, so kind, so genuinely in love with the Yankees.
Q: What was your childhood dream?
A: To be on Broadway. That’s still kind of my childhood dream.
Q: What was the first Broadway show you saw?
A: This is actually a funny story. I was way too young to go see “Wicked,” it was new and my parents wanted to see it. I was a very anxious child, I probably should have gone to therapy or something, but I definitely had like an anxiety disorder and I was terrified that it was gonna be scary ’cause all they told me it was about the Wicked Witch of the West. I walk in, they had like the dragon on the proscenium and I was like, “Hmmm, this looks scary to me … ” My parents are like no, no, no, it’s not scary, it’s not scary. And then immediately, the first thing that happens is the dragon lights up and starts moving and the music, it’s like da-da-da-da-da-da-da. And I was like, “Oh, I’m out.” I immediately started shrieking. My dad had to stay in the lobby with me the entire show ’cause my mom was like, “I’m seeing this thing, so you take her.” They tried to bring me back in at one point and it just so happened to be the flying monkey scene, so I was like, “You people are liars. This show is clearly scary.”
Gracie Cashman and Paul O’Neill sharing cookies. YES Network
Q: What is the biggest adversity you have faced?
A: I have endometriosis and PCOS (Polycystic Ovary Syndrome), which took a very long time to get diagnosed with. Once I had a diagnosis, I was so mad that it had taken so long to get a diagnosis, a disease having 10 years to wreak havoc on your body causes lifelong complications anyway. Like, I wouldn’t be having to freeze my eggs and navigating that. There were a lot of years that I felt really gaslit. And I’m obviously a big personality, and so I think that comes with people being a big personality and being a woman, the immediate response is, “She’s a drama queen.”
Q: How would you describe the pain?
A: I felt like I had been shot. And someone asked me in another interview like what made you keep going to search for an answer? I wish I could say it was some kind of drive and it was honestly just that every time I felt it I thought I was dying — it was like, “I have to go to the emergency room, I certainly won’t wake up tomorrow if I don’t.”
Q: How often would this happen?
A: Probably once every two months I would have a really bad flare-up.
Q: Now everything’s good?
A: Good is relative. Diagnose is helpful because you feel validated. The emergency room, the way it’s set up, is supposed to be like, “Are you experiencing a medical emergency? If yes, we do something, if no we refer you to elsewhere.” But if you need a morphine drip, you need a morphine drip.
Q: How often would you need a morphine drip?
A: Probably once every couple of months. I’ve been a lot better now that I have medicines that help keep everything under control a little bit. … But now we have the whole infertility of it all thanks to no one listening. We get to go through that now, but c’est la vie. It is what it is.
Brian Stute and Gracie Cashman attend the New York Botanical Garden Conservatory Ball at New York Botanical Garden on May 29, 2025 in Bronx, New York. Getty Images for New York Botanical Garden
Q: Three dinner guests?
A: Marilyn Monroe … I want to ask her how she died, I have questions; Jesus; Anne Boleyn; my grandma (Barbara).
Q: Favorite movies?
A: “The Princess Bride” and “Lilo & Stitch.”
Q: Favorite actors?
A: Cillian Murphy and Barry Keoghan.
Q: Favorite actresses?
A: Margot Robbie and Saoirse Ronan.
Q: Favorite singer/ entertainer?
A: Sabrina Carpenter.
Q: Favorite meal?
A: I like Buffalo chicken, like quite a bit (laugh). A boneless Buffalo chicken dip especially, when it’s made by my fiancé’s (Brian) mom — perfect. My fiancé has not nailed it yet, but we’re working on it.
Q: What is the best piece of advice your father ever gave you?
A: I don’t think it’s his quote, I think this is a quote he uses: “It’ll all be OK in the end, and if it’s not OK, it’s not the end” is his go-to. He tells me that several times a week — during a meltdown. I don’t have this calm demeanor that Brian Cashman has, so I call him melting down pretty frequently.
Q: What do you melt down over?
A: The wedding, he hasn’t gotten me his Save the Date list … anything I can think of … the coffeemaker’s broken … any minor convenience that happens in my life, he knows about (laugh). … My fiancé’s annoying me, he was coughing in his sleep, I didn’t sleep well …
Q: Is your fiancé the opposite of you?
A: Absolutely.
Q: You resemble your dad.
A: People would say, “Oh, she looks just like you,” and he’d say, “I know, she’s my little Mini Me.” He still says it.
Q: What are you most proud of about where you are today and what you’ve accomplished?
A: I never imagined that this thing I grew up around would coincide with my passion. Growing up as a theater kid, it didn’t really occur to me that I could ever be involved with baseball in any way. So I think that that’s been really cool to be like, “Oh, I really feel like I found myself through this show.” You can have both of these things happening at once.
