19 to 21

No, that’s not how many home runs Jimmie Foxx hit after he turned 33, it’s, Baseball... Then and Now

Volume 5, #33, August 31, 2007

News Item: September 9, 1945 – Jimmie Foxx of the Philadelphia Phillies hits his 534th and last home run against the Pittsburgh Pirates.

In a year of milestones and few millstones for baseball, the recent accomplishment of Alex Rodriguez should not be overlooked. A-Rod, as he is colloquially-known, didn’t just hit his 500th home run (admittedly a somewhat devalued gold standard), but became the youngest player to hit a 500th home run. This, combined with the recent millstone in San Francisco, has inevitably brought up the issue of just where A-Rod might go in the home run pantheon. Will he hit 700 home runs? 800? 900? Will he at least end up as the career leader in home runs? No one knows, but it might be instructive to take a look back at the man who previously held the record for the youngest 500th home run – James Emory Foxx.

Known as Jimmie, but also ‘Double XX,” “The Beast” and “Muscles,” Foxx was in some ways like A-Rod, in that he broke into the American League at a very young age, was a very good hitter at a very young age, a tremendously versatile athlete, and terrorized pitchers for many years. Foxx hit his 500th home run on September 24, 1940 for the Boston Red Sox. It was his final home run of the 1940 season, made him just the second player to reach 500 home runs, and came almost exactly a month before he turned 33 years old, since he was born in Sudlersvile, Maryland on October 22, 1907. The proverbial “farm boy,” Foxx was discovered by another future Hall of Famer and Maryland native, Frank “Home Run” Baker. Exactly how this came about is the subject of several conflicting stories, the most interesting of which is that Baker got lost driving on a scouting trip around Maryland’s Eastern Shore one day, and stopped to ask a kid plowing a field for directions. The plowboy pointed the way by lifting the plow with one arm and pointing with said plow. Impressed, Baker asked him if he happened to play baseball. Foxx said “yes,” and the rest is history.

Sadly for history, that story probably isn’t true. In his excellent biography, “Frank `Home Run’ Baker,” Barry Sparks gives a more likely version that originally came from an interview Baker gave to The Sporting News in 1955. Baker was managing the Easton team of the Eastern Shore League in the summer of 1924 when Dell Foxx, Jimmie’s father (the Foxx family apparently liked double consonants) came to visit, bringing with him an impressive-looking 16 year old boy (without a plow.) Baker invited the boy to a tryout the next day and found out he could hit with power to all fields and was a rifle-armed catcher who could run like a deer and play any other position as well. (As Foxx told the story in later years, Baker had sent him a post card first, inviting him to a tryout.)

Foxx then proceeded to tear up the Eastern Shore League for the rest of the 1924 season, hitting .297 with 11 doubles, two triples and 10 home runs in only 80 games… as a 16 year-old. Baker tried to interest the Yankees (Baker’s most recent major league team) in the boy, but Miller Huggins thought he was kidding with his story of a 16 year-old superstar. Thus rebuffed, Baker went to his first major league manager, Connie Mack, who, despite the falling out he’d had with Baker over the latter’s 1915 contract, took the old third baseman’s word and sent scout Mike Drennan to Easton. Since Drennan had also scouted Baker, he had a pretty good idea of what made a future star, and Easton sold Fox’ contract to the Athletics on July 30, 1924 for around $2000, with the stipulation that the boy would stay with Easton until the season was over. Foxx reported to Philadelphia late in 1924, and Mack actually played him in a couple of major exhibition games as a 16 year-old, before allowing him to make his major league debut on May 1, 1925 at the age of 17 years, six months and a few days.

Over the next three seasons, Mack got Foxx into 97 games as a catcher, first baseman and outfielder. This very gradual breaking in of a teenager was not an uncommon practice at this time – John McGraw was doing the exact same thing with Mel Ott during the same seasons. Although this breaking-in period probably made sense to Mack and McGraw, and maybe to Foxx as well, it wasn’t really necessary. Here’s Foxx’ line for the 1925-1927 seasons.

Thus convinced, Mack made Foxx a semi-regular, playing third, first and catching, in 1928 at the age of 20, and he hit .328/.416/.548 in 400 at bats – a 148 Adjusted OPS. Then, in 1929, at 21, he hit 33 home runs, walked 103 times and had a .354 batting average on the way to a 173 OPS+. The rest, you may know. He won back-to-back MVP awards in 1932 and 1933, hitting 58 home runs in the former year and earning the Triple Crown in the latter year, before being basically sold to the Red Sox ($150,000 and two stiffs) after the 1935 season as part of Mack’s Depression-driven economy drive. He then won another MVP for the Sox in 1938, while hitting 50 home runs. He was, simply, a ferocious hitter and, as to his versatility, he played 1919 games at first, 141 at third, caught in 108 games, played the outfield 21 times and even pitched in 10 games, going 1-0 with a 1.52 ERA.

As famous as Foxx was, and as good a hitter as he was, you have to think that there was some speculation at the end of the 1940 season as to his chances of reaching the Babe’s 714 career home run mark. After all, he had just gone where no one else other than the Babe had gone, and where only Ott would even approach until the early 1960s. Had Bill James’ Favorite Toy been around in 1940, statisticians of that era would have predicted that Foxx had a 38.4 percent chance of catching Ruth, and that he could be expected to hit 690 home runs. He’d hit 50, 35 and 36 home runs in the preceding three seasons and was, as noted, just short of his 33rd birthday. And he was finished. Foxx would hit just 34 more home runs over the course of the 1941, 1942, 1944 and 1945 seasons, ending his career back in Philadelphia in 1945 as a 37 year-old part-time third baseman, first baseman and pitcher for the Phillies. He played his last major league game on September 23, 1945, at the age of 37 years and 11 months. What happened? Foxx was actually a more than little like Mickey Mantle as well. A superbly-talented, extremely popular, well-liked athlete who could do just about anything well on a baseball field, but who was “done too soon” (as Neil Diamond would say) largely due to alcohol. Famous for going into bars and announcing “Old Double XX is here,” Foxx’ liver might well have suffered Mantle’s late-in-life fate if he hadn’t choked to death on a piece of meat while eating dinner with his brother in Miami in 1967.

A cautionary tale for A-Rod? Not really, except to point out that, as Joaquin Andujar used to say, in baseball, you just never know. Looking back at the stats after the 1940 season, it looked like Foxx was a real threat to at least hit 700 home runs. Maybe the war might have derailed him, but, if he could have played regularly until he was 39 (as Ruth did), averaging just 30 home runs a year in Fenway for the next seven years (thus giving him a total 710), well, almost anything could have been possible. And, almost anything is still possible for A-Rod.

The most highly-touted high school prospect of the 80s and 90s (except maybe for Ken Griffey, Jr… another cautionary tale), Rodriguez played at four levels during the year he turned 19, hitting 21 home runs. Drafted number one by the Mariners in 1993, around the time of his 18th birthday (July 27), A-Rod hit .319 with 14 home runs in 65 games single A ball in 1994. Promoted to double A for 17 games, he hit .288 with another homer, after which the Mariners called him up (he only hit .204 in 17 games), debuting in the majors just before he turned 19. Sent back to Triple A when the strike hit, he hit .311 with six more homers in 32 games. Like Foxx, Mantle (who hit his 500th when he was 35) and Griffey (who hit his when he was 34, but who could have done it at 32 if he was healthy), he was indeed a natural, who could do it all on the field. However, unlike Foxx and Mantle, he has taken good care of his remarkable physical assets and, unlike his former teammate in Seattle, he has been largely able to avoid serious injury.

So, when A-Rod hit his 500th home run on August 4, 2007, just eight days after turning 32, did that mean he will go where Foxx could not, and where Griffey is unlikely to go? Applying The Favorite Toy again, we find that, on the day A-Rod hit number 500, he had a 51.6 percent chance of hitting 715 home runs, and a projected career total of 718 home runs. Backing up to the start of the 2007 season, at that point in time he had a 14.7 percent chance to reach 800 home runs, and a projected career total of 681. (Note how his projected career total has risen with the big year he’s having in 2007.) Recognize, though, that The Favorite Toy (which is now called by the boring title “Career Assessments”) is a blunt predictive tool, and one that makes a key assumption – that, on the average, a player will only play in the majors until he‘s 36.5 years old. While that seems way too conservative, realize it’s a median, based on the assumption that, if you take 100, 31 year-old players, they’ll play a total of 550 more seasons in the majors – an average of 5.5 years each. Or, if you take two, 31 year-old players, they’ll play a total of 11 more years in the majors – an average of 5.5 years apiece. Of course, if one of those players is A-Rod and the other is, say, Rey Ordonez, well, they might still total 11 more years between them, but A-Rod will have 10 of those years, and Ordonez (of The Ordonez Line fame) will have one.

Without getting too caught up in predictive statistical models, logic would seem to dictate that Alex Rodriguez can play a lot more than just another four-and-a-half or five-and-a-half years, even if he is run out of New York by those lovely Yankee fans. Assuming he stays healthy, it doesn’t seem unrealistic to posit that he could play productively until he’s at least 40. Say he plays another nine years after the 2007 season (i.e., until he’s 40) and averages 35 home runs a year. (He hasn’t hit less than 35 since 1997.) Even if he doesn’t hit another home run this year, he would still end up with 821 home runs.

Not only is there a pot of gold awaiting A-Rod at the end of the rainbow, in terms of a new eight or even nine figure contract, but another pot of gold, the career home run mark, may also await. The motivation is certainly there for Alex Rodriguez to shoot for 800 home runs. And, it seems clear that he has the ability and desire to do so. Just remember Jimmie Foxx and Mickey Mantle and Ken Griffey, Jr.

-- John Shiffert