St. Louis Cardinals rate the best and worst teammates with plenty of trash talk
The opening of spring training has a little bit in common with the first day of school. Many players will go the full off-season without seeing their teammates, and they may be a little surprised by what they discover upon reporting to the team complex.
The clubhouse is also a great place for trash talk. It’s a long season, and when you spend as much time around a static group of people as the members of the St. Louis Cardinals do, you develop a good sense for some individual eccentricities.
To explore those schisms and develop a better understanding of the environment inside the Cardinals clubhouse, the Belleville News-Democrat conducted an intake survey of Cardinal players as they arrived to spring training. The answers given here do not consist of a scientific consensus, but they do provide a few buses under which players may be tossed.
The participants: Harrison Bader, John Brebbia, Matt Carpenter, Paul DeJong, Jack Flaherty, Dexter Fowler, Jordan Hicks, Andrew Knizner, Andrew Miller, Alex Reyes, Adam Wainwright, Tyler Webb, Kolten Wong
Which of your teammates looks the most different this spring?
Winner: John Gant and Matt Wieters (TIE: 3 votes)
Also receiving votes: Carlos Martínez (2), Reyes (2), Brebbia, Génesis Cabrera
MILLER: “Gant took me off guard. I don’t know why. You look at him now and he looks like usual. I always forget what Brebbia looks like, too. Because at the end of the year he’s a different guy.”
BREBBIA: “Johnny Gant. It’s the hair and the lack of mustache. Last time I saw him he was cruising with a beautiful face flow.”
FOWLER: “I haven’t really seen everybody. (laughing) It’s probably gonna be Moony (Yairo Muñoz). I’m just playin’.”
WAINWRIGHT: “We had a couple guys beef up, we had a couple guys slim down. Matt Wieters, definitely. Great goatee.”
Which teammate makes you want to stop and watch?
Winner: Flaherty (5)
Also receiving votes: Hicks (2), Bader, Paul Goldschmidt, Ryan Helsley, Kwang-hyun Kim, Martínez, Miller, Wong
BADER: “If Flaherty’s throwing off a mound, Flaherty. Whenever Goldy’s hitting I watch.”
BREBBIA: “I’ve never seen KK throw, so that would be like the novelty one.”
WEBB: “I watch Brebs’s changeup because he talks about it so much. (Brebbia, sitting nearby: “Mmhmm. And the splitter.”) And the splitter.”
WAINWRIGHT: “Bunches of people make me want to stop and watch. All these people do something I can’t do, so...this young fella next to me (Flaherty) is alright to watch. If Jordan was healthy, he’s the freakazoid you want to watch.”
Who are the best and worst clubhouse DJs?
Best: Hicks (4 votes)
Also receiving votes: Fowler (3), Wong
Worst: Carpenter (3 votes)
Also receiving votes: Bader (2), DeJong (2), Wainwright
MILLER: “They’re all bad. I don’t know. I try to block it out as much as I can.”
BADER: “I’m going to give me the worst DJ, for sure. That’s why I never take over.”
HICKS: “I’m up there with the best even though a lot of people probably wouldn’t agree.”
BREBBIA: “When people ask me what music I want to listen to, everyone says they don’t like it. But the music stays on, and the people are singing along by the time the second song hits the track. It’s Alanis Morissette Pandora, so it’s anything and everything mid-90s Alanis. And does it have The Cranberries? They’re swimming in cranberry juice it has so much Cranberries.”
WEBER: “I don’t know who the worst is, but I know when I get the most irritated is when I walk in the clubhouse and no one is in there and the music’s blaring. So they just turn on the music and then leave. So I don’t know who is doing it but someone is doing it. I’m not saying I don’t like the music. I’m just saying it’s uncomfortably loud and it’s like they want to hear it down the hallway, so they turn it up and then leave the room.”
WAINWRIGHT: “I’m gonna get worst on this, for sure. I don’t DJ though. People put stuff on for me. Like the other day, I walk in the weight room, and Helsley puts on David Allan Coe radio, which is like super old school country music. I didn’t pick it. He put it on because he thought that’s what I like, because he thinks I’m 100 years old.”
CARPENTER: “People would probably say me. I’d say me. You can go with me.”
Who would be the worst person to have as a spring training roommate?
“Winner”: Knizner (3 votes)
Also receiving votes: Hicks (2), Bader, Brebbia, Carpenter, Martínez, Wainwright
KNIZNER: “I don’t really do much cookin’, so when guys don’t have dishes clean, that’s not really a pet peeve of mine.”
FLAHERTY: “Knizner. He’d be asking me to do stuff all the time and I like to just chill out.”
DEJONG: “Knizner. You won’t get any sleep. He’ll be talking the whole time.”
HICKS: “I’ve already had Knizner as a roommate, but he was alright.”
WAINWRIGHT: “Carp is a total slob. He leaves his plates all over the place, leaves his clothes all over the place, leaves his wallet and his phone everywhere he goes so we have to go back and get it. But I also like hanging out with Carp, so that’s a tough answer. As far as the efficiency of being a roommate, Carp would be the worst roommate. But I would enjoy his presence.”
CARPENTER: “I would say Waino. He stays up late and he watches movies and I go to bed early. He sleeps in like long sleeve shirts and he’s got a weird night time routine that I don’t want to be a part of.”
Who’s most likely to forget to pack something important for spring training?
Winner: Hicks (5)
Also receiving votes: Bader (3), Carpenter (3), Brebbia, Giovanny Gallegos, Wong
AUSTIN GOMBER, pinch hitting for Knizner: “Carp forgets everything, dude. He forgets his glove all the time. Carp’s got a wife though. Guys that have wives are gonna rank lower on my list.”
WONG: “Bader, but he’ll just buy it, so it don’t matter. He could forget everything. He’ll just buy it.”
MILLER: “Hicks.” (Note: Miller answered before the question could be fully asked.)
BREBBIA: “I hate to say it, but I’ve locked my keys in my car while it’s been running three times in the past five years, so I feel like that is a dead giveaway.”
WEBB: “I’m gonna say Gio just because maybe he won’t read this. Gio.”
WAINWRIGHT: “I can’t give the same answer for all of them. It’s still Carp. That was my main answer. He forgets everything. That’s what he does.”
What’s the best non-baseball thing to do during spring training?
Winner: Go to the beach (4 votes)
Also receiving votes: Eat (3 votes), Golf (3 votes), Fishing (3 votes), Take pictures
KNIZNER: “I’m not a big golfer. I lose too many balls.”
FLAHERTY: “Go to the beach. I don’t do nothin’ else.”
BADER: “Go to Three Natives and get an acai bowl.”
BREBBIA: “Rolling my windows down in the car. That’s my favorite thing to do in Jupiter that’s not baseball. I roll my windows down and I drive around.”
This story was originally published February 21, 2020 at 5:00 AM.
