Adam Wainwright has given much to baseball. He’s given countless others so much more.
Perhaps the clearest way to explain the importance of Adam Wainwright to the St. Louis Cardinals is to guarantee earnestly that there’s no reason to be cynical about him.
Professional athletes come and go from cities with such frequency and are followed by so much gossip and innuendo in their wakes that you can find someone willing to sneer at almost anyone who’s put on a team’s uniform.
I would defy anyone to find such a person who could direct such an attitude toward Wainwright among Cardinals fans.
Monday’s announcement that Wainwright is the 2020 winner of the Roberto Clemente Award for his outstanding contributions off the field stands as the cherry on top of a heaping sundae of a career that took St. Louis baseball fans to some of the sweetest places in the sport.
For all of the celebrating Adam Wainwright has been able to do on the field, he’s brought a great deal more joy away from it.
His Big League Impact foundation partners with players around the major leagues to assist them in finding outlets for which they can be passionate in their own communities. The theory, as Wainwright explains it, is that he can have a wider reach into more parts of the world if he can convince those two whom he’s gotten through to reach out to those for whom they care the most.
This summer, Wainwright was the face of that connection, speaking at length with the media about his decision to support teammates who asked him and others in the clubhouse to wear shirts which read Black Lives Matter.
That decision, as Wainwright explained it, was for him about a Christian imperative and a duty to his teammates, who he describes as friends and brothers.
It was the choice to help people, as also flows through his work in Honduras, Haiti, the Dominican Republic, Ethiopia, the state of Georgia, St. Louis City, and countless other areas. It’s the distillation of the central theme of what Wainwright so frequently preaches — if someone asks for help, and you can help them, you ought to help them.
Balancing on field struggles with off field praise can be difficult.
Wainwright acknowledged on Monday morning that when he was 35, he felt some days like he was 65. Now, at 39, he says he feels 35 again, with years ahead of him in which he could be a productive pitcher.
After all, he also explained that some day he’ll have to look his financial advisor (and in his reckoning, his Lord) in the eye and explain that he did all he could to help others with the gifts he was given.
Every year of salary, even at the league minimum, goes a long way for those who need help.
Yadier Molina will text Wainwright out of the blue to tell him he loves him. Jack Flaherty, in the midst of a video conference with the media, attempted to reach Wainwright via FaceTime to congratulate him. A video tribute shown on the MLB Network featured kudos from Albert Pujols, Garth Brooks, and many other representatives of the various aid organizations to which Wainwright has made pledges, sent funds, or offered other types of support.
And still, when Wainwright is offered congratulations or sent a trophy, he insists that the point of the work is itself. Humbleness, after all, breeds skepticism in some cynical people, but it would be impossibly dishonest to read that from Wainwright, who is unflinchingly sincere even as he deflects awkward questions about free agency and his uncertain future ahead.
He was eager to talk about the crystal blue water and warm skies outside his home in Georgia, though. And he wanted to make sure he knew what time the broadcast of his award win would be aired so his mom could tune in without sitting through unnecessary hot stove talk.
The danger of having heroes comes in the risk that they will let you down, but in his 16 years as part of the St. Louis Cardinals organization, Wainwright has closed out one World Championship and supported another from the bench.
He’s bridged two eras of baseball with unflinching leadership backed by stellar performance and helped teammates direct their energies toward the communities they feel most strongly called to serve.
He’s struck out 1,830 batters and traveled to Honduras to install a water sanitation system in a village that may well have saved the lives of 1500 people, and he’s done it while pulling into his spot in the spring training parking lot in a Ford Econoline van that he needs because he and his wife are raising five children.
Well, perhaps the van is the complaint. Its lift kit, one spring, did cause its brakes to fail. And the following spring, it and he were involved in a minor traffic accident.
It’s hard to be cynical about a dadmobile.
