St. Louis pitcher Ryan Sherriff thought clubhouse prankster Adam Wainwright was taking him for a ride. Turns out, he was about to be given one.
When the Cardinals traveling secretary asked Sherriff for his driver's license, the 26-year-old left-hander thought someone was trying to mock his license photo, which still featured a picture from his high school days.
Sherriff spent last season at Class AAA Memphis and has an outside chance at making the big-league roster. He couldn't afford to ship his car from California to Florida for spring training, so he rented a house about 10 minutes away. He's been walking to camp and pretty much everywhere else this spring. There was no need for a license.
Three times Wainwright drove past Sherriff on his way to the ballpark. After offering Sherriff a bicycle, which the reliever declined, Wainwright asked traveling secretary C.J. Cherre to get Sherriff a rented car. Wainwright took care of the bill.
"That's the kind of thing that happened to me when I was younger," Wainwright said. "I remember I wore a couple of tired collared shirts in a row to the field and Mark Mulder bought me a whole box of collared shirts."
To rent the car, Cherre needed Sherriff's license. The young pitcher began to suspect something was up.
"So I run into Waino in the dugout [and] I'm like, 'Hey, man, are you pulling a prank on me with my ID?' " Sherriff said. "He grabs me by the shoulder. He's just like, 'Yeah, you better watch out.' "
A few hours later, while cooking dinner Wednesday night, Sherriff received a call from Cardinals clubhouse man Ernie Moore. The keys to a Nissan Altima were waiting for Sherriff in his locker.
"I got out of my house, I started walking," he said. "I called my mom. I started crying because it's the nicest thing anyone's ever done for me."
Knowing that Wainwright favored Chick-fil-A, sweet iced tea and barbecue sauce, Sherriff immediately drove to the fast-food restaurant to purchase a gift card and to a supermarket to pick up some tea and sauce. He left it in Wainwright's locker along with a thank you card.
"He nailed the thank-you gift," Wainwright said. "That's the best thank-you gift I've ever had."
Sweet payoff
Billionaire businessman Warren Buffett announced earlier this week that if any of his Berkshire Hathaway employees correctly predicts the NCAA men's basketball tournament Sweet 16 field, that person will receive $1 million each year for the rest of their life.
"If they can get to the Sweet 16, if there's only one of them, whoever it is, he or she gets a million dollars a year for the rest of their life," Buffett said on CNBC.
Several years ago, Buffett offered a $1 billion prize to anyone able to predict a perfect NCAA tournament bracket. Last year, he rewarded Berkshire employees with a $100,000 purse to those who predicted the most consecutive winners during the tournament -- a challenge he's issuing again this year.
Summer is coming
Major League Baseball is teaming up with the HBO series Game of Thrones to "participate in a cross-promotional partnership," according to entertainment website Deadline Hollywood. Nineteen MLB teams are expected to take part in the campaign.
Details of the partnership are currently pretty scarce, so Yahoo blogger Chris Cwik came up with a few ideas:
• "The San Diego Padres sign Khalil Greene to a one-year contract and refer to him as Khaleesi all day."
• "[Los Angeles Dodgers infielder] Justin Turner gets to use an actual sword at the plate since he resembles Tormund Giantsbane."
• "It's revealed that the St. Louis Cardinals get their 'devil magic' from the Three-eyed Raven."
So the "devil magic" has nothing to do with hacking into the Houston Astros' database? Interesting.....
Sports on 03/03/2017