MILWAUKEE – When the Cardinals open their series against the Brewers on Friday, Adam Wainwright will deliver the first pitch of the game to Yadier Molina. It can be taken for granted: If the Puerto Rican is healthy and Wainwright is pitching, they will work together. They have already done it 25 times this year.
They are Brunswick, Georgia and Bayamón, Puerto Rico, meeting every five days. When Wainwright takes the mound in Milwaukee, the duo will have formed drums for the 300th time, a milestone only reached by three other pitcher-catcher pairs in Major League history, a count that does not include the 14 games in which they have worked together in the postseason.
The others? Mikey Lolich and Bill Freehan (324 starts), Warren Spahn and Del Crandall (316) and Red Faber and Ray Schalk (306).
“For me, it’s a really impressive number,” Cardinals manager Mike Shildt said. Talk about longevity. Talk about everyone’s ability to compete. It speaks well of the fact that they wanted to stay in an organization for all this time. It is an incredible achievement for both of us. “
That Molina and Wainwright are achieving this feat as two individuals in unison is what impacts them the most. If Wainwright is asked about his individual accomplishments, he smiles and talks about something else. If Molina is consulted for his own, he focuses on the people who have helped him stay healthy along the way.
“When I turn to see what my career has been, once everything is over, I know that one of the things that I will be most excited and proud of is because I will be able to say that I threw Yadier Molina all these years,” said Wainwright in 2017.
“I love this man very much,” Molina said recently. “As a human being. He is a great companion and a great person ”.
It’s the kind of relationships that fans celebrate and that journalists try to capture. But few can fully appreciate the dynamics, dependency and connection between two individuals in the midst of battle at the highest level of their sport when there is only one partner you can lean on to do your job.
Among the exceptions, Jeff Saturday and Peyton Manning stand out with the Colts in NFL football, who owns the record for the most consecutive games started for a center-quarterback pair with 170. Also there are Misty May-Treanor and Kerri Walsh Jennings in beach volleyball, gold medalists in the Olympic Games in Athens (2004), Beijing (2008) and London (2012).
In the world of baseball, two other Cardinals legends, Bob Gibson and Tim McCarver, also built an unforgettable drum set.
“We did it Bob’s way.”
That’s what McCarver accepted. It wasn’t that he disagreed with Gibson. It was that he was not allowed to do anything else.
Gibson had a look. If McCarver called for a pitch and Gibson disagreed, he would simply shake his head slightly in obvious disapproval. It was almost as if he was saying, “You’re an idiot,” McCarver recalled during a BBWAA dinner in 2017.
“He kept going until I picked the right pitch,” Gibson said.
McCarver is doubly familiar with such relationships. He played 21 years in the Major Leagues, 12 of them for St. Louis. During that time, he received 197 of Gibson’s starts. He was also Steve Carlton’s personal receiver, both in St. Louis and Philadelphia. They were drum mates for 228 starts.
But with Gibson, the images are particularly indelible. Gibson threw the final pitches of the 1964 and 1967 World Series at McCarver. They were together when Gibson set his 17 strikeout record in Game 1 of the 1968 World Series, during which Gibson pitched three full games. In the months leading up to that Fall Classic, McCarver hosted Gibson 24 times in one of the best seasons in LA / LN history.
“I don’t know if we were inseparable before going through all those wars together,” McCarver said recently. “You win the 1964 World Series, you do some things and it means a lot to you. All this solidifies the cement, not only as friends ”.
Thus, talking about Gibson forced talking about McCarver. Their achievements were individual, but only achieved thanks to the other.
A society separated by 60 feet six inches became a bond for life.
“Everything I do about Bob and his family… they mean a lot to me, they are like my family,” added McCarver. “We were very, very close friends off the field. It was very funny. And I know everything about him. Everything”.
McCarver spoke to MLB.com during the Cardinals’ most recent Hall of Fame induction ceremony in late August. A day later, the Cardinals celebrated Bob Gibson Day, the first honoring him at Busch Stadium since Gibson passed away in October 2020.
On the field, when the first ceremonial pitch of Wendy Gibson, Gibson’s widow, was delivered, there was McCarver.
Madison Bumgarner and Buster Posey
It can be argued that, in this century, there has been no more consistently winning drummer than Madison Bumgarner and Buster Posey. Like Wainwright and Molina, they closed a World Series together. Molina leads National League history with 101 postseason games played, but Posey (53 games in October) and Bumgarner have one more championship (three to two).
Together, Bumgarner and Posey have been drums 226 times. Considering only active players, they are second behind the Molina-Wainwright duet.
“It’s rare for two teammates to play together for so long, and also to be drum mates,” Posey said recently. “Reading the three drums in front of them puts it in perspective for me, how rare it is for them to have achieved what they have done together.”
Wainwright has claimed that he and Molina are able to carry on long conversations from mound to plate without having to speak out loud. Most of the time, they do it without saying a word.
“You start to read the facial expressions and postures on the mound, even the way someone behaves in the dugout between innings. All of that goes into the equation, ”Posey explained. “I think a lot of that is even subconscious.”
Bumgarner is now a pitcher for the D-backs, having left San Francisco after the 2019 season. Posey, like Molina, has played on only one team. Could the once-Giants duo have been baseball’s last hope to keep up with Wainwright and Molina, reaching 226 starts together before age 33?
The next active battery with the most games has 121. They are Molina and Carlos Martínez, although Martínez’s days in the Cardinals seem to be numbered. Behind them are Venezuelan Eduardo Rodríguez and Puerto Rican Christian Vázquez of the Red Sox with 104 starts.
“Three hundred is a good number, right?” Wainwright said recently. “I don’t know if that’s something we’re going to see again.”
Posey shook his head: “No.”
MLB.com’s Maria Guardado contributed to this article.
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