photographs courtesy memphis redbirds
Adam Wainwright (left) and Yadier Molina
Few relationships in sports are as intimate as that between a pitcher and catcher on a baseball diamond. The battery, as they are collectively known, initiates every play, the objective of one (the pitcher) to hurl a baseball 60 feet, six inches past the batter into the other’s glove. What kind of pitch: curve, slider, fastball? Which area of the strike zone: up-and-in, down-and-away? The two players must, quite literally, think as one.
The St. Louis Cardinals’ Adam Wainwright (a pitcher) and Yadier Molina (a catcher) enter the 2021 season having started 274 regular-season games together, the sixth-most in the history of Major League Baseball, and the most over the last half-century. With 26 more outings, Wainwright and Molina would become just the fourth battery to start 300 games. (The Detroit Tigers’ Mickey Lolich and Bill Freehan hold the record with 324 starts, from 1963 to 1975.) “Waino” and “Yadi” will forever be connected as Cardinals, of course, but their seminal partnership began right here in Memphis, at AutoZone Park.
The Cardinals acquired Wainwright — then 22 years old — on December 13, 2003, in a trade that sent outfielder J.D. Drew to the Atlanta Braves. (Drew starred for the inaugural Memphis Redbirds team in 1998.) When he joined the 21-year-old Molina for their first spring training together, neither player had taken the field above the Double-A level. And there were rocky moments.
A statue of Molina will, someday soon, stand outside Busch Stadium in St. Louis, and don’t be surprised if a taller one is erected nearby, perhaps 60 feet, six inches away. And it all started in Memphis.
In the first inning of a Monday-night game in late April at AutoZone Park, Molina was charged with a passed ball on consecutive pitches from Wainwright. The catcher responded in the bottom of the first with a game-tying double and picked up four hits to help the Redbirds beat the New Orleans Zephyrs. Molina has since won nine Gold Gloves, the third-most by a backstop in the history of baseball.
In Wainwright’s next start, at Nashville, he didn’t last two innings, surrendering four hits, five walks, and seven runs to the Sounds in what would be his first loss for the Redbirds. The lanky righthander gave no indication he’d climb to third place on the Cardinals’ all-time wins list. (He trails only Hall of Famers Bob Gibson and Jesse Haines.)
Molina’s service time at the Triple-A level ended after only 37 games (eight starts with Wainwright) when he was promoted to St. Louis on June 3, 2004, after Cardinal catcher Mike Matheny suffered an injury and landed on the disabled list. He picked up two hits in his first start and, after backing up Matheny the rest of the season, started Game 4 of the World Series, the finale of a sweep at the hands of the Boston Red Sox. It would be the first of four Fall Classics in which Molina has appeared.
Wainwright won 10 games for Memphis in 2005 as Molina took over the catching chores in St. Louis. After making his big-league debut in September of that year, Wainwright joined the Cardinals’ bullpen in 2006 and homered in his first big-league at-bat (one of seven former Memphis Redbirds to achieve this feat). His final pitch of the season — a third strike to retire the Detroit Tigers’ Brandon Inge — was caught by Molina and earned the Cardinals their first world championship in 24 years.
The duo’s memorable moments over the last 17 years have been many, including a few back at AutoZone Park. Molina homered in an exhibition game before the 2017 season, merely four months before he became the first Cardinal in 43 years to go deep in the All-Star Game. Two years later, Wainwright and Molina took the field at Third and Union as opponents, Wainwright taking the mound for Memphis in another exhibition game against the parent club. Facing his longtime partner — each of them suppressing grins — Molina grounded out to shortstop.
In addition to their 274 regular-season starts together, Wainwright and Molina have started 14 postseason games, the number they are most interested in seeing increase this year. Each is playing on a one-year contract, both knowing 2021 could be the last season in careers shared longer than most teammates would dare to envision. A statue of Molina will, someday soon, stand outside Busch Stadium in St. Louis, and don’t be surprised if a taller one is erected nearby, perhaps 60 feet, six inches away. And it all started in Memphis.
AutoZone Park suffered a dormant season in 2020, a harsh casualty of the covid-19 restrictions. Baseball is back, and will regain normalcy (however that’s defined) in the weeks and months ahead. With its return will come the sensory reminders — that sunset over The Peabody, the barbecue nachos after the seventh-inning stretch — that link fans to past seasons, past teams, past players. Remarkably, two of those “past players” will still be doing their thing a short drive up I-55. Can Adam Wainwright and Yadier Molina outlast a pandemic? Like the best of partnerships, endurance has proved to be the tandem’s greatest skill.
