This lot is closed. Bidding ended on 5/11/2001.
Dividing his 20-year major league career mainly between the Philadelphia A's and the Boston Red Sox, Jimmie Foxx picked up Babe Ruth's mantle as the game's most feared slugger and did something Ruth never did – winning the Triple Crown in 1933. Foxx was only the second player, after Ruth, to hit over 500 home runs in a career (534 in all, 10th all-time). While the nation was in a Depression, Foxx boomed. In 1932, he went yard 58 times, two shy of Ruth's then-record, and copped the Triple Crown a year later, hitting .356 with 48 homers and 163 RBIs. Foxx didn't miss a beat after coming to the Red Sox in 1936, adding a 50-homer season in ‘38, when he also plated 175 runs (one of three times he led the AL in RBIs) while ringing up a .349 average. Foxx broke in with Connie Mack's Philadelphia A's in 1925. This very well toned ball signed by the Hall of Famer is markedly rare, as it is an OAL Ban Johnson ball. Johnson retired as league president in 1927, meaning Foxx's Hall of Fame career was budding at the time he signed it. The signature on the red and blue-stitched ball is in blue fountain pen just to the left of the Official AL stamp, and while the ball is pockmarked and faded in spots, the signature is vibrant and legible, rating an 8.