Joe Medwick

Joseph Michael Medwick (November 24, 1911 – March 21, 1975), nicknamed "Ducky", "Muscles", and "Mickey", was an American professional baseball left fielder. He played 17 seasons in Major League Baseball (MLB) for the St. Louis Cardinals, Brooklyn Dodgers, New York Giants, and Boston Braves from 1932 to 1948, including during the Cardinals' "Gashouse Gang" era of the 1930s. Medwick is the last National League player to win the Triple Crown award (1937).

A ten-time All-Star, Medwick was elected to the Baseball Hall of Fame by the Baseball Writers' Association of America in 1968 with 84.81% of the votes. In 2014, he became a member of the inaugural class of the St. Louis Cardinals Hall of Fame.

Early life

Medwick was born and raised in Carteret, New Jersey, the son of Hungarian immigrants. He excelled in baseball, basketball, football, and track at Carteret High School. Famed football coach Knute Rockne made arrangements for Medwick to play football at University of Notre Dame, but he chose professional baseball instead.

Career

Medwick entered professional baseball in 1930 with the Scottdale Scotties of the Middle Atlantic League. In 75 games he had a .419 batting average and 22 home runs. He spent most of the next two seasons with the Houston Buffaloes of the Texas League. He played 161 games for Houston in 1931, hitting .305 with 19 home runs. He played in 139 games for the team the next year, hitting .354 with 26 home runs before being called up to the major leagues.

He made his MLB debut with the Cardinals in 1932. By 1934, he hit .319 with 18 home runs and 106 runs batted in (RBIs). Though Medwick swung at any pitch near the strike zone, he was difficult to strike out. He became known as one of baseball's rising stars, but was competitive to the point of combativeness, and regarded by some as self-centered.

Medwick's hard-charging style of play got him pulled out of the seventh game of the 1934 World Series by Commissioner Kenesaw Mountain Landis after a hard slide into third baseman Marv Owen on a triple which caused Detroit Tigers fans to pelt Medwick with fruits and vegetables. Landis also ordered Owen benched. Medwick remains the only known player to be thrown out of a game for his own personal safety. When asked about the incident after the game, Medwick replied, "I knew why they threw them. What I don't understand is why they brought them to the ballpark in the first place."

Medwick won the National League Triple Crown and the NL Most Valuable Player Award in 1937, leading the league with a .374 batting average, 31 home runs, and 154 RBIs. He remains the last NL player to win a Triple Crown. Medwick also led the National League with 237 hits, 111 runs scored, 56 doubles, 406 total bases, and a .641 slugging percentage. Before his 26th birthday, Medwick had accumulated 1,101 hits, the 12th highest total for a 25-year-old player in MLB history.

Medwick's 64 doubles in 1936 remains the National League record. He also held the National League record with seven consecutive seasons with 40 or more doubles until Stan Musial topped it with nine. Team president Branch Rickey and owner Sam Breadon also thought the trade would be best because they thought that Medwick was becoming increasingly discontented with being a Cardinal, having spent all season haggling with the pair over his contract.

Six days after the trade, Medwick was nearly killed by what some at the time regarded as a beanball thrown by former Cardinals teammate Bob Bowman. A mob of Dodgers led by their manager, Leo Durocher, charged the mound and had to be restrained from going after Bowman by the other Cardinals and the umpires. Uniformed members of the New York City Police Department sat with Bowman in the dugout to protect him from the crowd, and on request from Dodger president Larry MacPhail, nearly one hundred were present by the end of the game. Medwick did not blame Bowman for the beaning, telling one of O'Dwyer's aides: "No direct threat had been made to me by Bowman. I saw the ball leave from his hand, but that was the last I saw of it." Durocher and the Dodgers told him they still thought the hit by pitch was deliberate; Bowman countered that "I never meant to hurt Joe."

Though contemporary baseball writers wondered if the beaning would affect Medwick's playing, baseball historian Frank Russo does not believe that it did, pointing to Medwick's strong statistics in 1940. In 1941, Medwick helped Brooklyn win their first pennant since 1920. During a USO tour by a number of players in 1944, Medwick was among several individuals given an audience by Pope Pius XII, who had been Cardinal Secretary of State before his elevation to the papacy. Upon being asked by the Pope what his vocation was, Medwick replied, "Your Holiness, I'm Joe Medwick. I, too, used to be a Cardinal."

Late in his career, Medwick said that golf was helping him to stay in good physical condition; 36 holes per day allowed him to walk more than 10 miles "without heavy strain".

Medwick recorded 2 five-hit games and 49 four-hit games in his MLB career.

Later life

In 1966, Medwick was hired as a hitting instructor in the Cardinals minor league system, a role he held until 1975. He was buried at St. Lucas Cemetery in Sunset Hills, Missouri, a suburb of St. Louis.

Legacy

Medwick received no votes for enshrinement in the Baseball Hall of Fame the first seven years after his retirement, which is sometimes attributed to his strained relationship with teammates and the press. He continued to fall short of the required 75% vote threshold on numerous ballots until he was elected by the Baseball Writers' Association of America in his final year of eligibility in 1968.

In January 2014, the Cardinals announced Medwick among 22 former players and personnel to be inducted into the St. Louis Cardinals Hall of Fame for the inaugural class of 2014.

Joseph Medwick Park along the banks of the Rahway River in Woodbridge Township and Carteret in Middlesex County, New Jersey is named in his honor.

References

External links

Joe Medwick Oral History Interview - National Baseball Hall of Fame Digital Collection