Paul Goldschmidt

Paul Edward Goldschmidt (born September 10, 1987) is an American professional baseball first baseman for the St. Louis Cardinals of Major League Baseball (MLB). He also represents the United States in international competition. Lightly recruited out of The Woodlands High School in The Woodlands, Texas, Goldschmidt played for the Texas State Bobcats, and was selected by the Arizona Diamondbacks in the eighth round of the 2009 MLB draft. He made his MLB debut with them in 2011, and they traded him to the Cardinals during the 2018–19 offseason. A seven-time MLB All-Star, Goldschmidt won the National League (NL) Most Valuable Player (MVP) Award in 2022. He has also won two Hank Aaron Awards, four Gold Gloves and five Silver Slugger Awards, the latter of which is the most among first baseman. While leading the NL in home runs and runs batted in (RBI) in 2013, Goldschmidt won each of an All-Star selection, Hank Aaron, Gold Glove and Silver Slugger Awards for the first time. He also has twice finished runner-up for the NL MVP Award, in 2013 and 2015. Early life Paul Goldschmidt was born in Wilmington, Delaware, on September 10, 1987, and grew up a Houston Astros fan. His parents, David and Kim, met at the Rochester Institute of Technology in New York. His mother is Catholic and his father is Jewish. Goldschmidt and his two younger brothers were raised Catholic. His Jewish great-grandparents, Paul and Ilse Goldschmidt, and his grandfather, Ernie (who now lives in Fort Lauderdale, Florida), escaped Nazi Germany in 1938 before the Holocaust. Goldschmidt said he and his two brothers "know our Jewish history and we respect those beliefs. We had both sides of it as kids. My dad's side, my mom's side. We were exposed to all of it."