Waino wearing number of hats post-baseball

This story was excerpted from John Denton's Cardinals Beat newsletter. To read the full newsletter, click here. And subscribe to get it regularly in your inbox.

Adam Wainwright no longer pitches for the Cardinals, but he’s still trying to squeeze every ounce of excitement and fulfillment out of life that he can -- even if it means his voice is a little scratchy, he yawns between sips of coffee and he often wakes up in a different city several mornings a week.

Most days for “Coach Adam” are filled with him being the volunteer assistant for kids Caleb’s T-ball team, Sadee’s 8-U softball team and/or Macy’s 12-U softball team. A couple of days a week, he makes the commute to Secaucus, N.J., where he works as an analyst for MLB Network. On that network’s airwaves, Wainwright recently spoke up on behalf of (gasp!) hitters, defended Luis Severino staying in the game after losing a no-hitter and playfully talked through the words of Wilson Phillips’ 1990 song “Hold On” in a message to impatient Cardinals fans.

As if that isn’t enough work for the “retired” hurler, Wainwright also stays plenty busy promoting and singing songs off his new album, “Hey Y’all.” And on Saturday, he'll start another new gig when he makes his regular season debut with FOX as a game analyst on Baseball Night in America for the call of the Mets-Rays game. In between all that, he tries to stay on top of a backyard garden that is “rocking right now,” and he worries that too much time away will allow those pesky weeds to take over.

Does he miss pitching? Quite frankly, Wainwright hasn’t had enough free time to miss it.

“I miss the guys, but I’m so plugged in with what I’m doing at home, musically and with the broadcasting,” Wainwright said from the MLB Network studios where he was working before flying home to be at his daughter’s softball game. “Midway through Spring Training, I had picked the girls up from school, and I hadn’t eaten lunch, so we went and got some food. I looked up and the Dodgers and Padres game was on, and I went, ‘Wow, that’s right, baseball is on!’ I hadn’t even thought about it.

“With the TV stuff, I’m just talking baseball, which I absolutely love. I’ve had so much fun with [TV work]. I wish I could be with my family every day and do this [TV work] every day. That would be perfect.”

Whereas some retired athletes struggle to replicate the adrenaline rush sports sends coursing through their veins, the 42-year-old Wainwright felt much the same rush of pitching in the big leagues as when he’s up on a stage and singing songs. Performing at the historic Grand Ole Opry, where red-clad Cardinals fans made up approximately 1,000 of the 4,500 in attendance, felt almost as electrifying as pitching in the World Series, the 2006 champion said.

“The [green] room I was in, they had pictures of the cool people who had been in there, like Allan Jackson and Randy Travis, and then you walk out on the stage, they cut the circle out of the Ryman, where they used to do the Opry, and now that’s on the Opry stage and I’m thinking, ‘George Jones stood on that circle; Conway Twitty stood in that circle; Willie Nelson, George Strait and Garth Brooks stood in that circle,’” said Wainwright, who sang several of the songs off his new album.

“It’s very similar to the starting pitcher controlling the game and controlling the flow of the game. Every lead singer who has ever stood in that circle, it’s very similar for them.”

With FOX, Wainwright hopes to be the kind of analyst who can share the insight into the game that he cultivated while pitching for the Cardinals for 18 seasons and winning 200 games. In some ways, he said retirement was made easier for him because he wouldn’t have been able to pitch in 2024 anyway considering how damaged his shoulder was by Sept. 18, when he gutted his way through his final seven-inning outing to become just the third pitcher in the rich history of the Cardinals to win at least 200 games.

“I got some great advice from a couple of legendary broadcasters -- when I hear a game in my head, I hear Vin Scully calling it, and I got to do an inning with Bob Uecker a couple of years ago and we had some great conversations,” Wainwright said.

“Bob and Vin said the same thing -- you never bad-mouth the player; if you want to talk bad about the play, that’s OK, but with the player that makes it a personal thing. I do think when you’re broadcasting the game it’s OK to say, ‘I know that’s not the play he’d want to make.’ That’s probably how I’m going about handle things.”