Wainwright Sees Beltran in Pinstripes, and Then Wakes Up BOSTON - Adam Wainwright woke up sweating last week, terrified by a bad dream: his Cardinals had lost the National League Championship Series and had failed to get Carlos Beltran to his first World Series. Beltran then signed with the Yankees, won the pennant and sat on a podium saying, "I'm so happy to be a Yankee and in the World Series." "I was like, oh my gosh," Wainwright said. It was a nightmare. Not that that's not a great team, but I woke up and had sweats, and said we've got to be the team to get him here. No disrespect to the Yankees in the world. I know what the media can do. I think the New York Yankees are an amazing franchise. It was one of many entertaining moments at Wainwright's news conference Tuesday, a day before he was to face Jon Lester in Game 1 of the World Series. Wainwright also said that Beltran's wife, Jessica, had asked to take a photograph of the two of them after the Cardinals did win the N.L.C.S. Wainwright had struck out Beltran, then a Met, to win the 2006 N.L.C.S., and Jessica said to him, "Back then, it wasn't in the Lord's plan, and now it is." "I'm getting chill bumps sharing that with you," Wainwright said Tuesday. Wainwright also discussed his Tommy John operation, which should be of interest to the Mets. Matt Harvey, their ace, had successful Tommy John surgery on Tuesday, performed by Dr. James Andrews, the Mets announced. Wainwright was operated on in February 2011, missed an entire season, in which the Cardinals won the World Series, and came back weaker in 2012. "I had terrible stuff last year," Wainwright said. I was trying to find a way to make it work. There would be days where my stuff would be O.K., and there would be days where I didn't have any stuff at all. No fastball. The fastball wasn't fast, the changeup wasn't changing, the slider wasn't sliding. He relied on his curveball but that was not enough. He finished 14-13 and posted a 3.94 earned run average, his highest since he became a major league starter. He pitched a gem - allowing one run over seven innings - in Game 4 of the N.L.C.S. against the San Francisco Giants but was physically spent, he said. It took until this season, about two years after having surgery, for Wainwright to feel like himself again. Aside from back-to-back poor starts at the end of August and early in September, he was dominant again. His E.R.A. was 2.94. "The very first throw, the ball came out of my hand this off-season, and it was like seeing that old friend you hadn't seen in a long time," Wainwright said. It was like, there it is. There are a few factors that seem to be in Harvey's favor. He is five years younger than Wainwright was when he had the operation. Because Harvey had his operation Tuesday, he will have more time to recover than Wainwright did. Wainwright had about 13 months, and Harvey has about 17 months until the 2015 season.