The World Baseball Classic is set to kick off in less than a month, and the St. Louis Cardinals happen to be a team with several of their key players taking part in this legendary event.
Four Cardinals stars, Miles Mikolas, Adam Wainwright, Nolan Arenado, and Paul Goldschmidt, will be joining Team USA.
Wainwright will be taking part in the Classic for the first time in his career.
He’ll do so in preparation for his final season in Major League Baseball.
An old friend of his, longtime catcher Yadier Molina, is managing Team Puerto Rico, and Wainwright revealed that Molina had been trying to recruit him to join the Puerto Rican National Team.
Wainwright mentioned that Molina had been constantly telling him to join Team Puerto Rico because he is, as Molina put it, “his brother.”
Yadi was trying to use a little brotherly love to recruit for the World Baseball Classic. 😆 pic.twitter.com/xb0oSV5tYl
—MLB (@MLB) February 8, 2023
The two Cardinals legends share a special bond, having won two World Series titles together in 2006 and 2011.
Though Wainwright is going to pitch one more season, he’ll be doing it without Molina behind the plate.
Molina and Wainwright have been together for some of the greatest moments in Cardinals history.
When Wainwright struck out Carlos Beltran in Game 7 of the 2006 NLCS, it was Molina behind the plate who caught that final strike after his go-ahead home run.
When the right-hander closed out the 2006 World Series, Molina was the one to eleven again to catch the final strike.
The only difference if Wainwright had joined Team Puerto Rico is that Molina is the manager and wouldn’t be catching him, but it does go to show the power of their unbreakable bond and what the two Cardinals legends mean to each other.
