Charity work, singing lessons had a hand in Waino’s decision to return to Cardinals
Adam Wainwright’s decision to return to the St. Louis Cardinals for the 2020 season was not made on the basis of baseball alone. There were singing lessons and volleyball practice to consider.
The 38-year-old righthander agreed to a one-year contract on Tuesday, the financial terms of which were not disclosed. His 16th season wearing the birds on the bat will leave him trailing only Jesse Haines (18) and Bob Gibson (17) for the franchise’s longevity record, but he insisted that next year’s plans were not a foregone conclusion.
“I wasn’t telling y’all stories,” Wainwright said on a conference call on Tuesday afternoon. “At the end of the year I had to sit down with my wife and my kids and ask them a couple different times if they were comfortable with me going back to play baseball again. As I have to keep reminding my lovely wife, this is not about me anymore. There’s way more people involved in it than just me.”
Wainwright and his wife, Jenny, are parents to five children, and he regaled the participating media with a rundown of his family’s average week of activities. Two of his four girls play volleyball, with a third expressing interest. Two play basketball. Two golf. His oldest is pursuing musical instruction.
And then comes the charity work.
“If I’m going to be honest, I wouldn’t have gone anywhere else on a one-year deal, probably,” Wainwright conceded. “But if somebody would’ve called with a two-year deal in a really nice place that had a chance to win, I would’ve had to consider it just for what you can do with that money that you then receive.
“My financial advisor would’ve slapped me in the mouth and told me how many mouths we could feed or houses we could’ve built for people who need it with that money if I would’ve turned it down.”
Wainwright and his wife have long-standing commitments through their Big League Impact foundation which assists underprivileged people in the Dominican Republic as well as victims of sex trafficking in St. Louis. His retirement will likely include work done in sustainable farming with an eye toward assisting food-insecure people.
That retirement, though, will be put off for at least one more year.
More time with Yadi?
The 2020 season is also the last covered under the contract of Cardinals catcher Yadier Molina, whose close relationship with Wainwright has led each to describe the other as a brother at various times. Wainwright said Tuesday that he and Molina hadn’t had any formal conversations about “riding off into the sunset upon retirement,” before hastily adding that his daughter Macee is planning for a future which includes the two families sharing one oversized roof.
Sources have intimated that Molina may be seeking an extension to his contract and would likely be willing to accept a pay cut from his current $20 million-per-year salary in order to complete such a deal.
If Molina does sign an extension in St. Louis, it’s unclear whether Wainwright would plan to join him for 2021 or beyond. Wainwright joked Tuesday that his representation approached the Cardinals about a guaranteed six-year pact but conceded that “at the moment we are going year to year and with the likelihood of this probably being it.”
He added, “but who knows how those things work, man?”
Source of confidence
If not for the confidence bestowed upon him in the 2019 season by two sources – one likely, one less so – Wainwright might not have found his way back to the level needed to go 5-1 with a 2.97 ERA in September. In the postseason, he was even better, allowing only three earned runs and three walks while striking out 19 in 16 2/3 innings pitched.
“This year in September and October especially was the first time in three years that I felt like I was a force out there on the mound,” Wainwright said. “That used to be my strength and that was something that, when you’re hurt, when you’re hurting, it’s hard to have that level of confidence.
“It took me a few months this year to really buy into the fact that I was healthy again and buy in to my abilities. And once I did that before the end of the year, I really started feeling like things fell in place.”
Cardinals Hall of Famer Chris Carpenter, now a special assistant with the team, told Wainwright on two separate occasions that he needed to trust his stuff because, as Wainwright put it, “your stuff is good again.” If that guidance from a venerated and retired peer was expected, it was a young pitcher’s emergence that got even more of Wainwright’s attention.
“Jack Flaherty did the exact same thing for me this year,” Wainwright recalled. “In late August he pulled me aside, which takes some cojones to do that to a 14-year vet when you’re a second-year player.
“He said, ‘we need you to be what you can be, and I think you can be better than you’ve been, and you need to believe in yourself again.’ And it was kind of like right out of Chris Carpenter’s mouth.”
Wainwright said his first reaction to Flaherty was to want to to “ruffle up [his] feathers,” but he realized Flaherty was correct. He took it as the challenge it was intended to be, and it carried him through the end of the season.
Whether next year is Wainwright’s last is something he said he’ll “consider letting everyone know” when the decision comes. In the meantime, he expressed a belief that this Cardinals team has a nucleus which can compete for the World Series, and that belief is driving him to come back even as he drives his daughters to practice.
“I’m playing it ‘this year at a time’ at the moment,” Wainwright said. “We’ll see what happens.”