Jimmie Foxx stood exactly six feet tall and weighed 195 pounds, and could launch home runs like few players before him. Nicknamed "Double X" and "The Beast" based on his remarkable power at the plate, he played for four different teams during his 20-year MLB career with his most productive seasons coming as a member of the Philadelphia Athletics (1925 to ’35). Though he played in only 215 combined games during his first four years with the Athletics, Foxx came in with a bang in 1929 and never looked back. From that season – in which he hit 33 home runs – through the 1935 campaign, Foxx crushed 286 home runs, averaging 40 round-trippers per season for seven straight years.
His heroic efforts in both 1932 and ’33, however, were legendary. In ’32 he captured his first of back-to-back American League MVP awards after batting .364 and leading the league in home runs (58), runs batted in (169) and runs scored (151). His .749 slugging percentage was simply off the charts. Incredibly, Foxx had even more in reserve for his encore performance in ‘33. Although his team finished third in the A.L. standings, Foxx led the league in batting average (.356), home runs (48) and runs batted in (163) to earn his first and only Triple Crown. He was just the seventh player in baseball history to win the coveted Triple Crown, which has only seen eight more winners in the ensuing 81 years. Not surprisingly he was again named A.L. MVP, easily outdistancing runner-up Joe Cronin of the Washington Senators.
Foxx was awarded his American League MVP award plaque by members of the Baseball Writers Association of America. An accompanying period newspaper photograph shows him accepting the impressive hardware on the field at Philadelphia's Shibe Park. Offered here, the wooden plaque, painted black, measures 13.5” high by 17” wide and is adorned by a 14” wide by 8.5” silver-plated placard featuring a raised image of Foxx swinging through at the plate just above the words: “TO JAMES EMORY FOXX Philadelphia Athletics Most Valuable Player in American League.” A separate, smaller silver-plated placard is centered directly beneath the larger one and is emblazoned with the words: “1933 AWARD.” Please note that a small dent, a manufacturer’s defect, can be seen in the larger, silver-plated placard just to the right of Foxx’s baseball cap. It can actually be seen in the newspaper photograph of Foxx accepting the award so he received it with the small dent intact.
This is the first time the 1933 A.L. MVP award plaque has been offered publicly and its provenance is impeccable. Foxx, who died in 1967 at the age of 59, went on to win one more A.L. MVP award with the Boston Red Sox in 1938 and finished his career with 534 home runs. He was just the second player in MLB history to hit 500 career home runs, after Babe Ruth. He reached the elusive plateau at age 32 years and 336 days and held the record for the youngest player to reach 500 home runs for 68 years until Alex Rodriguez broke it in 2007.