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Earlier this week, St. Louis Cardinals pitcher Adam Wainwright noticed 26-year-old pitching prospect Ryan Sherriff was walking everywhere.

Derrick Goold of the St. Louis Post-Dispatch explained:

Every day this spring, Sherriff has made the 10- to 15-minute walk from the condo he’s renting to the ballpark. He then walks back after workouts. Unless he needs groceries. Then he walks the 10 minutes, 15 minutes in the other direction to go get groceries. On his walk early Wednesday morning, a teammate noticed Sherriff and realized that, yes, he had seen the same person making the same walk the previous two days. Each time he saw Sherriff he was further away from the ballpark, so his condo had to be a hike.

Wainwright offered him a bike. Sherriff kindly declined. Wainwright offered him a car. Sherriff kindly declined, again—but the 35-year-old didn't listen.

Hours after a team employee asked Sherriff for his driver's license Thursday, the left-handed reliever found out that a Nissan Altima rental car had been delivered for him at the ballpark—all expenses paid.

"Waino got me a rental car," Sherriff told Goold. "I freaked out a little bit. I started crying. I called my mom, and she started crying. Really, I've never had that experience. No one has ever done something so nice for me before."

That was quite a gesture from Wainwright, who said he was just passing the torch. According to Goold, Wainwright wore the same collared shirt a few days in a row as a young player. Then-teammate Mark Mulder left a box of new shirts in his locker.

"That's the kind of thing that happened to me when I was younger," Wainwright said. "Many, many, many things like that happened to me. You just kind of pass that stuff on."



Per MLB.com's Jenifer Langosch, Sherriff paid his teammate back with some personal gifts:

[Twitter, h/t For The Win]