ST. LOUIS — By now, we should be dissecting Cardinals rotation plans and who's hitting cleanup in the lineup.
We're not, of course, because of the ongoing lockout.
While we're sitting here waiting for baseball, so are the players, like Cardinals veteran starter Adam Wainwright.
Wainwright talked with 5 On Your Side's Frank Cusumano in an interview for Sports Plus that will air Sunday night at 10:30.
Like all of us, Wainwright thought the league and the union were getting close to a deal on Monday night into Tuesday and was preparing to get ready to head to Jupiter for spring training.
"That day I went out and was making sure I was doing my last couple things of preparation here before I left here to go down to Jupiter and kind of prepping the family that this thing was probably about to happen. I don't want to speak too much about it, but I don't think the owners had any mind at all to negotiate a fair deal that day. I think this was exactly what they wanted to do," Wainwright said. "I think they wanted to put more pressure on the players, miss a few games and make us really feel it. But as history has proven, the players aren't gonna crack. They're gonna have to be reasonable and come to the table with their offers."
Wainwright signed a one-year deal to return to the Cardinals for 2022, but for now, he's hanging out with his family in Georgia and enjoying every minute he has with them.
"I haven't been here in south Georgia where I live, in springtime in 22, 23 years. So this is kind of like training wheels for retirement for me," Wainwright said. "I'm getting a little taste of it now, but hopefully I get to go back to work here soon and we work it out."
In the midst of the doom and gloom currently surrounding the lockout negotiations, Wainwright wanted to emphasize that the players haven't forgotten about the fans.
"The one thing I do want to stress, though, the one thing that's not lost on us that can seem like it is, is we love our fans. We love the game of baseball, and we're trying to do what we think is right for our players coming up, but it doesn't mean we don't love our fans and appreciate them so much. We do love them. We can't wait to get back out there and play in front of them again," Wainwright said.
Wainwright and teammate Yadier Molina, who has said he will retire after this season, are just 20 starts away from breaking the all-time MLB record for starts as a battery.
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The opening two series of the season have been canceled by the league so far, and if that continues to grow, thoughts of Wainwright and Molina breaking that record this year could start to dissolve.
"Yeah, we need a full year, man. Because I don't want to break it by one. I want to beat it by 12 or 13, I want to have a good margin in there," Wainwright. "But I think that is a really cool record. It's just such a neat thing to be able to share that with Yadier and Cardinal nation for the rest of our lives. And it's never gonna get broken. It's hard to say never, but the likelihood of that record ever being broken, if Yadi and I don't do it, is almost zero percent."
And when asked if he had a message to baseball fans out there during this rough time for the game, Wainwright kept it simple.
"Please don't give up on us. We love you so much and we can't wait to see you," Wainwright said.
"The game of baseball has always been America's pastime. And we need to do a better job, Major League Baseball and players, marketing the game to the fans and making the fans feel our love. Especially after this debacle that's been going on, we need to do a better job and do some cool and special things for our fans when we come back."