St. Louis, Missouri – Amidst a packed football stadium and millions of people watching him every night on television, Paul Goldschmidt still keeps a secret: with his wife, he has been behind the nurturing and sponsorship of the entire lives of 12 refugee children at a small church in suburban St. Louis for more than a year.
Not a single post. Not a single photo. Not needing anyone to know.
The story was only recently revealed when a volunteer at the church accidentally mentioned “the strange man who regularly delivers milk, school books and writes handwritten letters of encouragement to the children, always wearing a baseball cap that covers his face.”
“Every time he came, the kids would shout, ‘Here comes Daddy Baseball!’ They didn’t know he was the MVP of the NL, they just knew that every time he came, they had another reason to believe in tomorrow,” Pastor David Holden recounted, choking up.
According to church records, the Goldschmidts also paid for the entire medical treatment of a 7-year-old girl with end-stage renal failure – a sum exceeding $180,000. Their identities were kept secret until Amy’s handwritten letter to the girl was revealed:
“You don’t need to know my name, just know that you have someone praying for you to live.”
In a rare public comment after the story went viral, Paul Goldschmidt simply said:
“I am a man of faith. Faith doesn’t need to be proven by interviews. It’s just acting when no one is watching.”
When the world thinks of Goldschmidt, it’s his powerful swing, his trophies, and his quiet leadership of his team. But behind the scenes, he and his college-age wife have become heroes – not on the scoreboard, but in the hearts of children who once thought they were invisible.
A 9-year-old boy in the refugee group whispered to his teacher:
“I don’t know who he is. But I want to be like him when I grow up.”