PostCards: Adam Wainwright’s Workout Day Comments

Adam Wainwright addressed the media during Thursday’s Workout Day in advance of the 2014 National League Division Series between the St. Louis Cardinals and Los Angeles Dodgers. A fire alarm just after Wainwright began to address the media.

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Q. As great as your season was do you feel like it was still overshadowed by Kershaw and is that going to fire you up tomorrow?
ADAM WAINWRIGHT: No, this is a different season now. I pay no mind to that. He had a tremendous regular season and now we go into the pose see some.
(Fire alarm going off.)
…
ADAM WAINWRIGHT: Yeah, it’s all fun and games, until it’s real. (Laughter.)
More time in the press room. Lucky me, right? Surrounded by my favorite people. Is this live? Because this is good TV. Should we talk about something then? That doesn’t matter?

Q. Did you eat anywhere good last night?
ADAM WAINWRIGHT: I did. Faith and something. Farm to table organic, very good.

Q. Do you think Kershaw pulled the alarm?
ADAM WAINWRIGHT: I don’t even know how to answer that. (Laughter.)
It was all a ploy so we could get all the media in here. He wasn’t going to make it, so he pulled the fire alarm.
…
Q. Can you talk about your season, how good it was, obviously it was overshadowed by Kershaw.

ADAM WAINWRIGHT: Obviously it was?

Q. Does it give you any more inspiration for tomorrow like, Don’t forget who I am?

ADAM WAINWRIGHT: No, I pay no mind to what happened in the regular season. Obviously Clayton had an amazing regular season and now we go to the postseason and it’s anybody’s ballgame. This is one game for the rest of your lives every day. So we’ll take that mindset and be ready.

Q. Last year there was a little friction between the Cardinals and the Dodgers during the series. Is any of that held over from last year as far as this season or this playoff?

ADAM WAINWRIGHT: I don’t think so. I think that any time you have two very good teams going at it like we did last year and two great organizations, that obviously have mutual respect for each other and lay it on the line every night, you’re going to have some squabbles every now and then. I don’t think any of that carried over this year.

Q. You and Clayton are in that very small group of the best pitchers in the league. When you look at him when he’s doing his thing, what do you admire, what stands out to you about how he does his job?

ADAM WAINWRIGHT: I’m more impressed that, what is he, 26 years old? 27 years old? One of the two. Either way. That he’s had the career he’s already had and is the pitcher he is already. Most times it takes a pitcher a few years to kind of break in and then he starts finding his own and he’s just been excellent from the very beginning.

Q. We have seen some great pitchers duels in the postseasons over the years. What is it like to have all this tension on the idea that you might be one of them and the pressure, too, not to allow ‑‑ I mean every run counts so much?

ADAM WAINWRIGHT: This year, going into this season I told myself from the very beginning that I was going to pay no mind to any outside distractions. I wasn’t going to think about if hitters had had prior success against me, I wasn’t going to get caught up in matchups and media hype and fan hype and all that, I was just going to focus on making pitches and that’s what I plan on doing tomorrow.

Q. As a baseball fan though, throughout your life you’ve seen some of these games and to be a part of one where you know it’s this incredible duel.

ADAM WAINWRIGHT: Yeah, to be a fan it would be a great game to watch tomorrow and I am a fan of baseball, but I have a much bigger job to do tomorrow, I’ll be very focused.

Q. The tone that Mike set, he was pretty optimistic all season, even when things were a little herky jerky for y’all. How did that convey to the clubhouse and how did he do a good job of keeping it believable without falling into just being a, for lack of a better word, a cheerleader, that the team could buy into his optimism?
ADAM WAINWRIGHT: Well, his leadership and his message is not one that he runs through the clubhouse with pompoms and loud speakers. His message is constant and it’s always positive, but it’s in the right times. It’s not overdone. It’s just natural.

When you find someone who leads in a natural way, it’s not forced and it’s not ill‑timed, it comes across very good. And our team throughout this entire season when we have had injuries and times where we struggled, he was our constant source of positiveness that kept believing. When you have your leader think like that, it filters into the players.