Baseball’s “Forgotten” Super Slugger

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Sports

Former Eastern Shore farm boy, Jimmie Foxx, rivaled MLB’s very best

Long before Aaron Judge broke the single-season home run records last year of fellow New York Yankees Roger Maris and Babe Ruth, a young man from a small farm on the Maryland Eastern Shore was on pace to hit more four-baggers than any of them. 

His name was Jimmie Foxx, nicknamed “The Beast” for his superhuman strength and monstrous blasts. And in 1932, at age 24, he waged an epic assault on one of the most coveted records in sports, the 60 homers hit five years earlier by Ruth, The Sultan of Swat.

If Foxx had topped Ruth and remained on track to hit more dingers than Maris and Judge did in their record seasons, he would still be the American League home run king and reign as one of the nation’s most famous athletes. Instead, he ended up a few homers short and, after a bittersweet 20-year career that put him in the Baseball Hall of Fame, faded away, becoming one of the game’s least-remembered greatest players.

“If you asked the average American baseball fan if they ever heard of him, you’d get a lot more no’s than yes’,” says John Bennett of the Society for American Baseball Research.

“He was one of the all-time greats,” says John Odell, curator of history and research at the Baseball Hall of Fame. “You would think more people would know him. People just don’t.”

“Foxx is the forgotten man among baseball’s all-time super sluggers,” Major League Baseball historian John Thorn wrote in his 1998 book, Treasures of the Baseball Hall of Fame. Thorn added, “Double X (Foxx) was poison to pitchers, the first man to challenge Ruth as the home run king.”

Why haven’t more people heard of The Beast, a gentle one, whose achievements included: being the first player after Ruth to hit 500 career homers, having 30 or more homers in a then-record 12 straight seasons, and winning a then-record three Most Valuable Player Awards?

A chief reason is that Foxx played in the shadow of the charismatic Ruth, who performed on center stage, in New York City, the world’s media capital that helped make The Great Bambino an international icon.

An all-star with both the Philadelphia Athletics and Boston Red Sox, Foxx was also often overshadowed by Ruth’s fabled teammate, Lou Gehrig, a fellow first baseman. In the inaugural 1933 All-Star game, Gehrig played the entire contest with Foxx, the American League’s reigning MVP, on the bench.

In 1998, after many fans had long forgotten or never heard of Foxx, The Sporting News, known as “The Bible of Baseball,” ranked The Beast as the 15th greatest player ever, with Gehrig as No. 6 and Ruth as No. 1.

Foxx’s best years were during The Great Depression, 1929 to 1939, when people were more interested in finding work than attending ball games. He retired in 1945 and soon watched baseball begin to regularly televise its games, making many of his successors well-paid household names while he struggled financially and eventually filed for bankruptcy. If he had played another season, he would have been eligible for a new MLB pension.

“You made only one mistake, Jimmie,” Yankee great Joe DiMaggio told Foxx, “You were born 25 years too soon.”

Born on October 22, 1907, in Sudlersville, Maryland, Foxx signed his first pro baseball contract at 16, played a year in the old Eastern Shore (minor) League, and then, without graduating high school, made his Big-League debut on May 1, 1925, with a pinch-hit single. He was 17.

Four years later, on July 29, 1929, Foxx appeared on the cover of Time magazine as the young face of the powerhouse Philadelphia A’s, then headed to their first of three consecutive World Series, winning two.

“I worked on a farm and I’m glad of it,” Foxx told Time. “Farmer boys are stronger than city boys…I never realized then it was helping me train for The Big Leagues.”

Ruth’s record of 60 home runs was initially seen as “unbreakable” by anyone other than the 6-foot-2, 215-pound Babe since he alone hit more dingers in 1927 than most teams. But in 1932, the 6-foot, 195-pound Foxx, with the sculpted physique of a Greek god, rose to the challenge.

By the end of June, nearing the season’s halfway mark, Foxx had 29 homers and then got even hotter, walloping another 12 in the next 29 games. That put him on track in late July to finish with 63—three more than Ruth, two more than Maris had in 1961, and one more than Judge had in 2022. (Maris and Judge set their records after the season was extended in 1961 to 162 from 154 games.)

Foxx then hurt his wrist and thumb and cooled off in August before going on a final rampage. In the last five games of the season, Foxx stroked five home runs to finish with 58, just two short of Ruth.

“‘Well,’” Dell Foxx, Foxx’s nephew, quoted his uncle as telling reporters after the game, “I gave her a ride to the finish boys.”

​Ruth, 12 years older than Foxx, was born and raised in Baltimore, across the Chesapeake Bay from the Eastern Shore. Rival and mutual admirers, they hit the longest homers in the game and prompted sportswriters to call Foxx “The Right-Handed Babe Ruth.”

After the 1932 season, The Brooklyn Daily Eagle newspaper asked players and managers a question many wondered and debated: who hit the ball harder, Foxx or Ruth? Cleveland Indians Manager Roger Peckinpaugh sought to end the dispute, asking: “Why make a choice between the two? Just give the crown of the left-handed hitters to Ruth and concede that Foxx hits the ball harder than any other right-handed batsman.”

In 1940, at 32, Foxx hit his 500th career homer, putting him on pace to top The Babe’s record of 714. “I’ll bet he does it,” said Boston Red Sox teammate Ted Williams. But Foxx again came up short, this time when injuries and alcohol slowed him down and forced him to retire five years later after hitting just 34 more homers. 

After leaving the game, Foxx had a series of short-term jobs, including ones as a sporting goods salesman, sports announcer, and manager in 1952 of the Ft. Wayne Daisies of the All-American Girls Professional Baseball League, immortalized by the 1992 movie, A League of Their Own.

Actor Tom Hanks played Jimmy Dugan, portrayed as a former baseball player turned loud, profane, and falling-down drunk manager. The character was based largely on Foxx. Former Daisies disputed the movie’s depiction of him. They said Foxx drank, but he was no Jimmy Dugan. “He was always a gentleman,” said ex-Daisy Katie Horstman. 

Once Foxx retired and did not move back to the Eastern Shore, Sudlersville began to see its longtime hometown hero as a broken-down has-been with a drinking problem and difficulty holding a job.

“Sudlersville had pretty much disowned Daddy,” said his stepdaughter, Nanci Foxx Canaday. “I really don’t know why. But I knew Daddy could handle it. Daddy taught us if someone is mean to us, kill them with kindness. That’s what Daddy always did.”

Baltimore native Gil Dunn opened a pharmacy on the Eastern Shore. Saddened by the lack of interest in Foxx, Dunn erected a small museum of the Hall of Famer in his store and wrote him, asking if he would like to contribute. In the summer of 1966, Foxx drove to Dunn’s pharmacy unannounced with a trunk full of memorabilia. “Here you might as well have all this,” Dunn quoted Foxx. “No one else is interested.”

Years after Foxx died in 1967 at 59—he choked on food while having dinner with his younger brother, Sam—nephew Dell Foxx delivered a speech about his uncle to The Sudlersville Lions Club. “This man never attracted the attention or salary of Babe Ruth,” Dell Foxx said. “He was an amazing hitter, but he was no showman on or off the field. When others complained that he didn’t receive his share of attention, he would smile and say, ‘It’s alright. It’s a lot of fun anyway.’” 

In 1987, the Sudlersville Betterment Club, a civic group, posthumously reembraced Foxx by erecting a stone memorial in his honor. In 1997, it dedicated a life-size bronze statue of The Beast, swinging a hefty bat.

At the dedication, Maryland Gov. Harry Hughes, who played a season in the Eastern Shore League as a 22-year-old pitcher, said: “Great baseball players are an inspiration to their community and baseball fans everywhere…We recall Jimmie Foxx as an example for all youth who would play the game.”

In 2007, baseball historian Bill Jenkinson helped Sudlersville celebrate the 100th anniversary of Foxx’s birth and make amends. “History has not been fair to Jimmie,” Jenkinson wrote in a tribute. “What do we do?...Tell the truth…Foxx was a marvel.”

As a young man, Dell Foxx looked like his barrel-chested, square-jawed, and ruggedly handsome uncle, so much so he was the model for his statue. In the mid-1950s, Dell Foxx played high school baseball on the Eastern Shore, looking little like his uncle. “I remember being at bat while a bunch of old men sat behind the screen, muttering, ‘He sure doesn’t hit like his uncle.’ I remember thinking, ‘Not many people hit like my Uncle Jim.’”

Foxx might have broken Ruth’s home run record in 1932, except for the late-season wrist injury that temporarily slowed him down and newly raised outfield barriers that made it tougher to homer in a few parks. The weather may also have been a factor, given reports that he lost two homers to rainouts.

Regardless of what might have been, The Babe was impressed.

“Foxx is the greatest batsman in Major League Baseball today,” Ruth, then 37 and near the end of his career, declared after the season. “He’s such a nice kid, I was kind of sorry for him when he came so close to the record and missed.”

Foxx said, “If I had broken Ruth’s record, it wouldn’t have made any difference. Oh, it might have put a few more dollars in my pocket, but there was only one Ruth.”

In the end, the long-underappreciated Foxx may have underappreciated himself. “If Foxx had busted Ruth’s record in ’32, his career and place in history would be a whole other story,” said Bob Schaefer of the Society for American Baseball Research. 

“Foxx would have owned the new home run gold standard for decades, one that future sluggers would have all chased.”

In 1997, The Eastern Shore Baseball Hall of Fame Museum opened at the Arthur W. Perdue Stadium in Salisbury, home of the Delmarva Shorebirds, a minor league team. The regional shrine honors hundreds of pro and amateur players. A long-slighted former farm boy, Jimmie Foxx, is the biggest draw.