Clemente Award nominee Goldschmidt learned from dad

This story was excerpted from John Denton’s Cardinals Beat newsletter. To read the full newsletter, click here. And subscribe to get it regularly in your inbox.

ST. LOUIS -- Last month, between night games of a home series against the Dodgers, Cardinals veteran first baseman Paul Goldschmidt was at a St. Louis-area youth baseball complex teaching kids the proper way to run the bases and answering questions from their parents for more than three hours.

The Goldschmidt kids camp, which has grown each year over the past three seasons, is a labor of love for the Cardinals' star first baseman, but also one that he proudly conducts because he was once a young baseball player daring to dream that he could make it big. After having former Cards bench coach and current Marlins manager Skip Schumaker and St. Louis first-base coach Stubby Clapp speak at the camp the past two years, Goldschmidt proudly invited his father, David, to answer questions from parents about how he helped put Paul in position to become one of MLB’s premier sluggers.

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All Paul could do was smile when David told the approximately 200 parents in attendance how his son didn’t make his high school varsity team as a freshman and might have been the third- or fourth-best player on the team his senior season. David, who implored his son to work on his craft if he wanted to make something of himself as a baseball player, was always a driving force behind Paul -- both on the baseball field and off it.

“My dad’s always been my role model and I’m still trying to follow in his footsteps,” Goldschmidt said proudly. “As far as that baseball camp, he’s been through [the baseball circuit] with three boys who played competitively, and I wanted the parents to hear his perspective. I wanted to bring somebody in who had been through it to give another perspective, knowing that I don’t have all the answers.

“The whole time I was just still remembering my dad forcing us to do community service to help others. And it was about saying ‘yes sir’ and ‘yes ma'am’ and having good manners and respecting adults. It was something that was always engrained in us and something I have tried to carry over now.”

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David’s lessons clearly stuck with Paul, who is the Cardinals' 2024 nominee for MLB’s prestigious Roberto Clemente Award for humanitarian work off the baseball diamond. It is the ninth time in Goldschmidt’s likely Hall of Fame baseball career that he has been nominated for the Clemente Award by the D-backs and the Cardinals.

In June, Goldschmidt received the 2023 Lou Gehrig Memorial Award, which is given annually to the MLB player who best exemplifies the giving character of Hall of Famer Lou Gehrig. During the award ceremony, Goldschmidt presented St. Louisan John Ceriotti, an ALS patient, with a custom Cardinals Permobil wheelchair. Goldschmidt also autographed baseballs for the ALS Association in St. Louis and the Muscular Dystrophy Association to support their fundraising efforts.

While teaming up with former teammate Adam Wainwright’s foundation, Big League Impact, Goldschmidt has raised more than $150,000 through the #ALLWIN campaign, pledging dollars for causes close to his heart. Some of those include Food for the Hungry and Habitat for Humanity St. Louis. He has also championed Goldy’s Golden Ticket, a program for deserving youth organizations to get game tickets, T-shirts, photo cards, tickets and food vouchers.

Goldschmidt and wife, Amy, enjoy spending time with pediatric patients in St. Louis and participate in hospital visits and Make-A-Wish events. He even autographed baseballs for the Cardinals Family Grab Bag Event, which this year raised nearly $50,000 for area nonprofits Angels’ Arms, Covenant House, KEEN St. Louis and Lydia’s House.

“There are a lot of deserving people here with the Cardinals, but this obviously a great honor for me,” Goldschmidt said of being the Cardinals' nominee for the Clemente Award. “We have lots of people in this organization doing great things off the field, and I’m just trying to do my part.”