After announcing his retirement from baseball in 2024, Adam Wainwright will be the only team legend gone from the St. Louis Cardinals. Waino played for the team for eighteen years during his entire big league career, winning hearts and minds along the way.
Wainwright’s gratitude for the Cardinals organization and all the coaches and players who supported him during his career is beyond words. Waino wrote an emotional Players’ Tribune article to express his gratitude to everyone. Fans of St. Louis will be most moved by this message:
“Aside from the jokes, it was fantastic—200 in front of you all during my last start. I won’t entail you in a play-by-play, given how recent it was. However, I’ll tell you about Adam Olsen and Jason Shutt, the two guys I hugged first after. Adam helped me recover from my Achilles and Tommy John. He is our head athletic trainer right now. Another one of our trainers, Jason, literally made it his mission to see me through to the finish line. Although you don’t hear much about either of those guys, they each contributed to saving a portion of my career. The absurd thing is that St. Louis is teeming with people just like that. Perhaps not individuals who delivered me, like Adam and Jason did.
But those who made a positive impact on me at a particular point in my career or touched a particular aspect of it. And when I consider all those individuals, including my teammates and our fans, I wonder where I would be without them and why our bond is so strong. My one and only favorite memory of being a Cardinal is how, each time I took the field, I contributed to the telling of a new tale. Beyond my story, but not my own. Greater than everyone’s.
One of the greatest Cardinals ever, Adam Wainwright finished with a 3.53 ERA and, of course, reached 200 wins in 2023.
