Paul Goldschmidt's run revives the tales of Joe Medwick

The Cardinal first baseman is chasing a Triple Crown, and a former Cardinal was the last National Leaguer to catch one.

Tony LaRussa, the White Sox manager who won two world championships at the helm of the Cardinals, is 77.

No National League hitter has won the Triple Crown in his lifetime.

Seven years before LaRusssa was born, Joe Medwick of the Cardinals slammed 31 home runs with 154 RBI and hit .374. That was the National League high in all those categories in 1937. Since 1900, Heinie Zimmerman, Rogers Hornsby (twice) and Chuck Klein are the only other N.L. hitters to win Triple Crowns.

Think about that. Maybe Willie Mays, Hank Aaron, Roberto Clemente, Ernie Banks and Frank Robinson kept getting in each other’s way, but Albert Pujols spent a ton of N.L. time as well. Not even Barry Bonds could do it. The year he hit an MLB-record 73 homers, his .328 average was seventh and his 101 RBIs were fourth.

So Paul Goldschmidt, the Cardinals first baseman, needs oxygen for the terrain he is walking.

He leads the N.L. with a .335 batting average (after Monday’s play), eight points ahead of Freddie Freeman. He has 105 RBIs, tied with Pete Alonso. His 33 home runs are two short of Kyle Schwarber’s total.

Those who snicker at batting average and “counting stats” have to come with grips with Goldschmidt’s Triple Crown status in the "slash-line” numbers. His 1.042 OPS (on base percentage, plus slugging) leads the National League by 102 points over teammate Nolan Arenado. In fact, only six N.L. hitters are over .900. Goldschmidt’s .418 on-base percdentage is seven points ahead of Juan Soto’s, and his .624 slugging percentage leads Arenado’s .569.

Consideringg the landscape and his excellence in all categories, Goldschmidt is fashioning one of the great offensive years in your lifetime, or mine, or La Russa’s. He is also doing it at age 34, and he is second in runs and third in hits. As long as St. Louis continues to rule the N.L. Central, Goldschmidt has radically simplified the process of Most Valuable Player selection.

Some historians will pick at Medwick because he wasn’t the undisputed home run king. Mel Ott also had 31. But Medwick’s 154 RBIs were 39 more than runnerup Frank Demaree of the Cubs, and his chasers in batting average were Johnny Mize, ten points in arrears, and Paul Waner, 20 behind. Medwick’s 1.034 was a league best.

Medwick was 25 at the time, and was in the midst of a six-season run in which he drove in 100 runs every year and led the league three consecutive years. His lifetime batting average was .324, and beginning in 1935 he had 224, 223, and 237 hits. In 1936 Medwick doubled 64 times, an MLB record that stood for 77 years.

Yet Medwick needed all 20 seasons of Hall of Fame eligibility to finally pass through Cooperstown’s door.

Medwick was antagonistic to reporters and was uncouth on the field at times. In Game 7 of the 1934 World Series, he tried for a triple, the Cardinals leading Detroit 9-0 in the sixth. He came in contac with third baseman Marvin Owen, and either he kicked Owen with the fury of Bruce Lee or his shoe innocently nudged Owen. In any case, Owen refused to shake Medwick’s offered hand, and when Medwick went to the outfield the next inning, the Detroit crowd tried its best to preemptively erase the memory of such an epic defeat.

It threw soda bottles at Medwick along with enough fruits and vegetables to fully stock Michelle Obama’s dream of healthy school cafeterias. At one point Medwick scooped up a banana as if it were a base hit. Third baseman Pepper Martin and shortstop Leo Durocher began playing pepper with the harvest.

After 17 minutes of this, commissioner Kenesaw Mountain Landis ejected Medwick from the blowout, which became 11-0. It was a protective action.

“It was like they were backing produce trucks up to the gate and supplying everyone,” said Detroit’s Charlie Gehringer.

The fruits of victory did not mellow Medwick, who could be tough on teammates, opponents and journalists alike. In that sense, his long wait for the Hall of Fame isn’t unfamiliar: the writers who vote sometimes use personal history as a criteria, along with pharmacology.

Medwick supposedly hated his nickname Ducky, invented by teammates who noticed noticed the way Joe walked. Later in life, and not long before he died of a heart attack while counseling Cardinal minor league hitters in 1973, Medwick said he didn’t mind the name.

“I’ve been called everything except ‘late for breakfast,’’’ Medwick said.

But Medwick wasn’t always what the modern player would call “a good teammate.” He had scraps with Martin and Tex Carleton and threatened to take on the club’s two best pitchers, Dizzy Dean and his brother Paul. An unnamed Cardinal said “half the National League” would attend Medwick’s funeral “just to make sure the son of a bitch is dead.”

In 1940 Medwick and the Cardinals had an economic disagreement — i.e., he wanted to get paid and the club didn’t want to pay him — and he was traded to Brooklyn in June. The Dodgers got to the 1941 World Series largely due to Medwick, and the players rallied to his side when Cardinal pitcher Bob Bowman concussed Medwick with a heater to the head.

Medwick grew up in Carteret, N.J., 110 miles from Mike Trout’s Millville. He was supposedly recruited by Notre Dame’s Knute Rockne to play football but, since there was no official NIL back then, he played sandlot baseball and waited for the scouts.

As always, the Cardinals had a thorough scouting department and put together the Gashouse Gang, a raunchy, raucous fraternity that got its name because it didn’t always wash its uniforms between games, and thus gave off the aura of car mechanics. Dizzy Dean won 30 games and lost seven, and led the charge whenever the Gang challenged the opposing dugout.

Dean was also a bit unvarnished, as fans of his CBS Game of the Week broadcasts would later discover. In his Hall of Fame speech he thanked the Lord for “giving me a good arm, a strong body and a weak mind.” As a minor leaguer in Houston, he ordered bacon in a restaurant but it didn’t exactly taste right. Turned out the waiter gave him brains by mistake. Dean started to protest, but his manager, Joe Schultz, said, “Be quiet. She knew what you needed.”

The last Triple Crown winners are American Leaguers, and the only man to win it in the past 55 years is Detroit’s Miguel Cabrera in 2012. It takes health, power, the clutch gene and consistency, and Goldschmidt would fit nicely among the membership. Considering how meticulous he is, he probably isn’t even late for breakfast. But he’ll still won’t make people forget Joe Medwick, and his salad days.