Joy Is Where You Find It, Even If That Means In St. Louis

The decrepit old laundry hamper with shoes typing this had at all times pegged (or possibly just pigeonholed) Defector Comrade Ellis as a keen and practiced skeptic, someone who viewed the world with equal parts misplaced hope and jaundiced weariness. But that shows how much appearances can deceive. At the least that is how we decide to view his two-day-old dare to us to put in writing about something that produces joy; it also might have been just second-level sadism, but we prefer to think that, all things considered, he just likes people being glad and sharing it. So we took him up on his challenge … and failed.

Kind of. We do not have Comrade Theisen’s rapturous view of the Detroit Lions, nor Comrade Nathan’s slack-jawed admiration of Coco Gauff, nor Comrade McKinney’s parental devotion to numerous Phillies, most recently Trea Turner. But a task is a task, and he didn’t specify who should be experiencing said joy, so we selected to show our eyes toward Adam Wainwright and essentially the most extravagant end-of-season promotion placed on by any team in the trendy era. This is not joy for us, per se, however it is fascination—and possibly it really works its way into something more. You can never tell with affairs of the guts, even when the guts, on this case, is being played by a coal bin.

Wainwright, the St. Louis Cardinals’ last vestige of the grand old days, is entering the ultimate few starts of a profession spent entirely in Missouri. He’s a win away from his 2 hundredth, and he has been trotted out start after start through a difficult final season to get it. He’s currently at 199 after besting the Baltimore Orioles on Tuesday and, assuming he pitches every fifth day, he has three more starts to hit the round number. In an otherwise fetid heap of oil rags for a season, the Cardinals are committed to this for him—but not only this. They’re also turning their final three days of the season into a festival of Wainwright, and not only Wainwright the pitcher, or Wainwright the teammate, or Wainwright the family man, a.k.a. all the standard avenues for feting a 19-year servant of the club.

It turns out Adam Wainwright can be a musical artist, and the Cardinals are turning their final series of the season against Cincinnati right into a full-blown Wain-o-fest. Friday is generally only a T-shirt giveaway (as we predict he is likely to be pitching that night). On Saturday, he’ll perform three original songs in a postgame concert. And on Sunday the primary 25,000 fans over the age of 16 will receive a playable guitar with Wainwright’s face on it. And if that is just too long a wait, you’ll be able to buy one on eBay for $79.99.

This seems to the distant observer like a little bit an excessive amount of, however the guitar giveaway is not geared toward us (though one supposes it is determined by how obnoxious we’re being). That is for Cardinal fans, who eat these items up and ask for seconds and, whether it is a little bit outside the box for the tradition-bound franchise, so it should be. They need this Grand Slam Opry after what will probably be their worst season in 33 years and their worst without firing no less than one manager in midseason since 1924 and, unlike most appreciation days, this one has instruments. One suspects the Cardinals are pleased that Wainwright never took up the tuba.

Either way, a grand time is anticipated available by all within the Cardinals’ stadium that weekend, starting with Wainwright himself. It will, we presume, achieve precisely the level of joy Comrade Ellis seeks to capture. So there it’s—Cardinals-Reds, with the underside of the NL Central and the longer term of ballpark music at stake. Possibly it will get him to pipe down about joy for some time.