Background
He was born near Sudlersville, Maryland, the son of Samuel Dell Foxx, a farmer, and Mattie Smith. Called Jimmy from infancy, Foxx tended to farm chores and engaged in hunting and fishing.
He was born near Sudlersville, Maryland, the son of Samuel Dell Foxx, a farmer, and Mattie Smith. Called Jimmy from infancy, Foxx tended to farm chores and engaged in hunting and fishing.
At the high school in Sudlersville, Foxx excelled in athletics.
When he was fourteen, he finished first in the 220-yard and high-jump competitions at the state track and field championships in Baltimore and was voted the outstanding athlete at the meet.
He also played baseball for his high school and for local semiprofessional teams. Soon word of Foxx's ball-playing reached John Franklin ("Home Run") Baker, formerly an outstanding player in the American League, who now managed Easton in the Eastern Shore League.
In 1924, Foxx signed his first professional contract, to play for Baker's team. Foxx appeared in seventy-six games for Easton, batting close to . 300 with ten home runs. After the season Baker sold Foxx's contract to Connie Mack, and in 1925 Foxx went into spring training with the Philadelphia Athletics.
Mack kept Foxx for a good portion of the season before optioning him to Providence in the strong International League. There he appeared mainly as a pinch hitter and substitute catcher, but hit well enough to earn another trial with the big-league team.
In 1926 and 1927, as Mack carefully rebuilt the once powerful Athletics, Foxx spent most of his time on the bench. In 1928 he became a regular player, alternating at catcher, first base, and third base and hitting for an average of . 328, with thirteen home runs.
Foxx reached stardom in 1929, when the Athletics won the first of three straight American League pennants and two straight World Series.
In 1929-1930 the Athletics, featuring, besides Foxx, such future Baseball Hall of Fame players as pitcher Bob ("Lefty") Grove, catcher Gordon ("Mickey") Cochrane, and outfielder Al Simmons, were one of the finest baseball teams.
Foxx hit . 354, . 335, and . 291 in those pennant-winning years and in 1930 batted in 156 runs. His best all-around season was 1932, when the Athletics yielded the pennant to Babe Ruth, Lou Gehrig, and the New York Yankees.
Foxx hit . 364, drove home 169 runs, and came within two of tying Ruth's all-time season home run record of 60. Foxx had become a highly capable fielder as well.
Dividing his playing time between first and third base, he made only eleven errors in a full 154-game season. The Baseball Writers Association voted Foxx the American League's Most Valuable Player for 1932 and again for 1933, when he topped the league in batting average, runs scored, home runs, and runs batted in.
The Great Depression brought dwindling crowds and shrinking revenues throughout baseball. The Philadelphia American and National League franchises, handicapped until 1933 by Pennsylvania laws prohibiting baseball on Sundays, were especially hard hit. Mack felt that he had no choice but to unload the high salaries of his star players. Foxx was the last to go.
Late in 1935 Mack traded him to the Boston Red Sox for $150, 000 and two nondescript players. Foxx was with Boston for the next seven-and-a-half seasons. Although the Yankees dominated the American League nearly all of that time, the presence of Foxx, as well as Grove and subsequently Ted Williams, made the long downtrodden Red Sox one of the circuit's consistently strong teams.
Foxx's hitting continued to be prodigious. From 1936 through 1941 he averaged nearly thirty-eight home runs and 130 runs batted in per season and had a combined batting average of . 322. In 1938, after hitting fifty homers and driving in 175 runs (nine short of the league record that Gehrig had established seven years earlier), Foxx received his third Most Valuable Player trophy.
Foxx had started in professional baseball at a trim 175 pounds, with exceptionally big biceps and forearms. Over the years he indulged his appetite for steaks and beer, so that by the time he was thirty he weighed 225 pounds during the season and considerably more in the off-season.
Excess weight was one reason for the rapid decline of his abilities in the early 1940's. Struggling at bat and afield, Foxx was waived out of the American League in May 1942 and released to the National League Chicago Cubs. Discouraged, he stayed out of baseball in 1943, only to return the next year as the Cubs, like all the other teams, sought to replace players lost to military service in World War II.
Foxx made only one hit in twenty times at bat, became a nonplaying coach, and then left to finish out the season as manager of the Portsmouth, Va. , minor league team.
In 1945 he tried one more time, with Philadelphia's National League team, before retiring.
Like other players who reached their prime in the 1930's, Foxx was a victim of the financial stringency of the Great Depression. Although Boston owner Thomas A. Yawkey paid him as much as $32, 500 toward the end of the 1930's, Foxx never got the money commanded by baseball greats in the 1920's; easygoing and amenable, Foxx never held out for a better contract. In the postwar years Foxx struggled to support his family without great success.
He moved to St. Petersburg, Florida, where he had become co-owner of two golf courses.
But World War II, imposing restrictions on travel and gasoline, ruined his prospects. Eventually he sold all his properties and options. Foxx did some radio commentary on minor-league games, drove a gasoline truck, and worked for a Miami fishing-equipment manufacturer.
He was always an easy mark for barroom acquaintances. Following the death of his wife in the late 1950's, Foxx went to Phoenix, Arizona, and then to Galesburg, Ill. (for an ill-fated restaurant venture), before returning to Florida.
He died in Miami, after choking on a fishbone.
His most productive years were with the Philadelphia Athletics and the Boston Red Sox, where he hit 30 or more home runs in 12 consecutive seasons and drove in more than 100 runs in 13 consecutive years. Foxx became the second player in MLB history to hit 500 career home runs, after Babe Ruth. Attaining that plateau at age 32 years 336 days, he held the record for youngest to reach 500 for sixty-eight years, until superseded by Alex Rodriguez in 2007. His three career Most Valuable Player awards are tied for second all-time. Foxx was inducted into the National Baseball Hall of Fame in 1951. Until 1966 when Willie Mays surpassed his record, Foxx's 534 career home runs were the most ever hit by a right-handed batter and the most by any player except Babe Ruth. Foxx's lifetime batting average was . 325, and at the time of his death he ranked fourth among the all-time leaders for runs batted in. Foxx was named to the Baseball Hall of Fame in 1951, six years after he stopped playing.
He married Helen Heite; they had four children.
