Inductees

Years ago, Joe “Ducky” Medwick once said, “I’ll stack my 1937 season with anybody.” He could have said that about his incredible career, too.

After all, Medwick was one of the most aggressive St. Louis Cardinals ever to wear the “Birds on the Bat” jersey, becoming well-known during the “Gas House Gang” era and leaving quite a legacy.

Which is why the Missouri Sports Hall of Fame proudly inducted Medwick with its Class of 2019. It completes a “triple crown” of sorts for the left fielder and slugger, an inductee of the National Baseball Hall of Fame in Cooperstown, N.Y., and the St. Louis Cardinals Hall of Fame.

And how fitting. Medwick won the Triple Crown in 1937 – and earned National League MVP honors – after leading the circuit in batting average (.374), home runs (31), and RBI (154). No National League player has done it since.

Medwick will forever stand in the Triple Crown circle of players such as Ty Cobb, Rogers Hornsby, Lou Gehrig, Ted Williams, Mickey Mantle, Carl Yastrzemski and Miguel Cabrera—the best of the best. In 1937, Medwick also led the league in hits, runs scored, doubles, total bases and slugging percentage.

Overall, his career featured: a .324 lifetime batting average, 10 consecutive seasons (1932-1941) batting better than .300, 10 All-Star selections, the NL season record for doubles (64) and the Major League Baseball record for most consecutive 40 double seasons (7).

Additionally, he was a key of the 1934 Cardinals World Series Championship – known more as the Gas House Gang. In 12 World Series games overall, he batted.324 with 15 hits.

Born in 1911 to Hungarian immigrants John and Elizabeth Medwick, he was a four-sport star at Carteret High School and played with quiet a fire.

“Maybe it was the Hungarian in me. I hated to lose, I always wanted to win,” Medwick once said. “Everything tasted better.”

Signed by the Cardinals in 1930, Medwick was dubbed “Ducky” while playing for the Class A Houston Buffaloes. In a naming contest, a young lady who had seen him at Galveston Beach said he “Walks like a duck and swims like a duck and should be called ‘Ducky Wucky.’”

At 21, he made his major-league debut Sept. 2, 1932.  He batted .349 in 26 games and never looked back. By May of 1936, the Brooklyn Daily Eagle proclaimed Medwick as “the best player in the National League.”

Few may know that Medwick is the only player ever removed from a game by the Commissioner of Baseball for his own safety and to prevent a riot.

In the seventh game of the 1934 World Series, the Cardinals led the Detroit Tigers 9-0. When Medwick trotted to left field in the bottom of the sixth, unruly Detroit fans showered him with fruits, fruit jars, vegetables and “gnawed ham hocks.”

Sports writer Red Smith said the barrage consisted of “elderly fruit and melancholy legumes.”

Earlier, Medwick slid hard into Detroit third baseman Marv Owen and carried a World Series .367 batting average.

After several delays, Commissioner Kennesaw Mountain Landis summoned Owen and Medwick to his box and “held court.” After a few terse questions, Landis motioned Owens to the bench but removed Medwick from the game. A famous photo shows Medwick being escorted away by five policemen.

Said Medwick, “Well, I knew why (the Tiger fans) threw that garbage at me. What I don’t understand is why they brought it to the park in the first place.”

In 1936, the 24-year-old Medwick married 19-year-old St. Louisan Isabelle Heutel. He surprised Isabelle by tossing her a two carat engagement ring while she sat in a front row seat at Sportsman’s Park.

At the wedding, groomsman Leo Durocher rushed the bride for a kiss as “I do” was said, nearly pre-empting the groom.

Joe and Isabelle became the parents of Susan (Medwick) George and Joseph Michael Medwick, Jr.

In 1940, Medwick was traded to the Dodgers, helping them win a pennant in 1941. After stints with the New York Giants and Boston Braves, Medwick returned to the Cardinals in 1947 and 1948 and then retired.

In later years, Medwick was a traveling minor league batting coach for the Cardinals and attended spring training at St. Petersburg, Fla.

There, doing what he loved most, he was stricken by a massive heart attack and died March 21, 1975. He was 63. Medwick is interred in St. Lucas Cemetery in Sappington.