(Busch Stadium) In the course of conversation during Monday night’s game, Randal Grichuk mentioned to a teammate that he had never seen a St. Louis Cardinals pitcher hit a home run. Adam Wainwright may have been listening.
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“Every time I’ve come to the plate since I’ve been eight years old, I’ve dreamed of hitting the ball like that,” said Wainwright, who launched a 3-run shot into Big Mac Land to tie the game in the 4th inning. “I’ve hit some really far homers in Little League and whatever, but I’ve never hit a ball, felt it, and known it was gone. I’ve always sprinted out the box and been like ‘go, go’ and then it goes and it’s like that was way out. I’ve never known whether it was a homer–I knew that was a homer. It felt pretty good.”
“Right now, it’s all about wins for me,” he said. “We’ve got to win the game when I take the mound until I get 100% back ready to rock and roll, like I’m going to. That seemingly kind of woke us up a bit.”
Wainwright’s homer was followed with blasts by Matt Adams, Aledmys Diaz, Kolten Wong, and Grichuk as the Cardinals combined for 2023 feet of longball to beat Philadelphia 10-3.
Besides the big home run, Wainwright continued to get closer to himself on the mound as he allowed three runs on five hits in six innings pitched with four strikeouts and a walk (96/66 strikes).
“I was very confident coming into the game,” said Wainwright. “The very first pitch I threw in Arizona, I knew I was on the right track. I’m very close, I really am.”
“Everything is good–I’ve just gotta get my hook going better,” he explained. “My curveball was still a little loopy at times. I gave up some 0-2, 1-2, 2-2 hits today that were kind of on that sloppy breaking ball. That last inning I wanted to go out there and throw as many of them as I could–get that feel, that game speed feel because you can’t really practice that between games. Until I get it, I’m going to continue to throw each pitch and expect it to be right. It will be eventually.”
The win also avoided losing four games at home, which has happened only 11 times in the time playing at Busch Stadium III.
“I don’t know if it’s pressing, but we’re not alive–we haven’t been alive the last few coming into tonight,” explained Wainwright.
“We didn’t play as good as we could have against the Nationals for sure. That’s all the way around–pitching, hitting, defense, everything. We know that. Everybody in here knows that. We don’t need to be told by anybody else that we could’ve played a lot better against the Nationals. We just gotta–this is a long season, but it’s very important for us to show up every day with the expectancy to win. The expectancy to make all the great plays, go out there and get the big hits, make the good pitches–that’s Cardinal baseball. That’s what we’ll get back to.”
photo credit: Bill Greenblatt/UPI
