The Decade Nobody Talks About Enough
Ask most baseball fans to name the greatest hitters of the 1930s and you'll get the same short list. Babe Ruth. Lou Gehrig. Maybe Hank Greenberg. And sure, Ruth was still Ruth in the early part of the decade, and Gehrig was as consistent as a Swiss watch from Opening Day through the last weekend of September, year after year. But if you actually sit down and look at the numbers across all ten years, one name keeps climbing to the top of the pile. Jimmie Foxx (1B/C, PHA/BOS).

The country was in rough shape the entire decade. The Depression had gutted people's savings and their confidence, and there was nothing glamorous about standing in a breadline or watching a neighbor lose his farm. Baseball was one of the few things that gave fans something to look forward to on a Tuesday afternoon. The game gave them Greenberg's big swing, Joe Medwick's fire, Chuck Klein's rifle arm and line drives to the gap. But Foxx was different. He was doing things with a bat that made even veteran baseball men stop and stare.

A Man Built for Offense
Foxx stood 6 feet tall and was listed at about 195 pounds, though plenty of accounts suggest he was considerably thicker through the chest and arms than that number implies. His nickname "Double X" fit. So did "The Beast." He had power to all fields, a short and violent swing, and the kind of plate discipline that separated genuine hitters from the sluggers who swung at anything close to the strike zone. His walk totals were consistently above 100 per season during his prime years, which tells you he wasn't just up there hacking. He understood what pitchers were trying to do to him and made them pay when they made a mistake.

The 1932 Season: The Case Closed
If there's one year that closes the argument for Foxx, it's 1932. Playing for the Philadelphia Athletics, he hit .364 with 58 home runs and 169 RBI, putting up an OPS of 1.218 and an OPS+ of 207 that still ranks among the greatest single-season performances in American League history. His WAR for that season was 10.4. He missed the Triple Crown because the batting average race went to Dale Alexander (.367), and because Ruth and Gehrig each hit 41 home runs, meaning Foxx led them by 17 and still didn't win the crown outright. His slugging percentage of .749 is the kind of number that makes you re-read the line twice just to confirm you saw it right, and he did it across a full 154-game schedule against every rotation in the league. The BBWAA had seen enough. Foxx won the AL MVP award, and it wasn't particularly close.

1933: He Did It Again
You'd think a player might take a breath after a season like that. Foxx did not take a breath. In 1933 he came back and won the Triple Crown outright, hitting .356 with 48 home runs and 163 RBI, posting an OPS of 1.153 and an OPS+ of 201 while earning his second consecutive MVP award. Back-to-back MVP seasons. Back-to-back 200-plus OPS+. That is not a hot streak. That is a man operating at a level that very few players in the history of the game have ever reached, doing it for two full seasons in a row against the best pitching the American League had to offer.

A City, Two Crowns, One Remarkable Year
Here is a piece of baseball history that most fans have never heard, and it is genuinely worth stopping for. In 1933, the city of Philadelphia produced two Triple Crown winners in the same season, one in each league, and nothing like it has happened before or since. While Foxx was dominating the American League across town at Shibe Park, Chuck Klein (OF, PHI) was doing the same thing in the National League for the Phillies at Baker Bowl, hitting .368 with 28 home runs and 120 RBI to lead the senior circuit in all three categories.

It wasn't even the first time in back-to-back years that Philadelphia had swept baseball's biggest individual honors. In 1932, Foxx had won the AL MVP while Klein took home the NL MVP, making it an all-Philadelphia awards sweep that no other city had managed. Then in 1933, both men went out and won their respective Triple Crowns. The only difference in the outcomes is that Foxx walked away with his second straight MVP while Klein, despite his Triple Crown numbers, lost the NL award to Giants pitcher Carl Hubbell, whose performance leading New York to the World Series title carried more weight with the voters that fall.

Think about what Philadelphia baseball fans were watching in those two seasons. You had the best hitter in the American League and the best hitter in the National League playing in the same city at the same time, in two different ballparks less than four miles apart. No other city has ever been able to say that. It is the kind of historical footnote that tends to get buried under the bigger names from that era, but it deserves to be remembered.

The Baker Bowl caveat is fair to raise when discussing Klein, because that right field wall sitting roughly 280 feet from home plate was genuinely short even by the standards of the day, and his road numbers were noticeably different from what he put up at home. But Klein hit .368 across the full season, both home and away, and his OPS+ of 176 that year confirms he was legitimately elite regardless of the park factor. He was not a mirage. Foxx's numbers, meanwhile, needed no such asterisk. He hit everywhere, in every park, against every pitcher the league threw at him.

Foxx vs. Gehrig: The Real Debate
Now here is where things get genuinely interesting, because Lou Gehrig (1B, NYY) was having one of the great sustained runs in baseball history at exactly the same time, and the two men spent the better part of the decade pushing each other toward numbers that neither might have reached playing in a weaker era. Gehrig's career OPS+ was 179, a staggering figure by any measure, and his consistency from year to year was the kind that pitchers had nightmares about during the winter months. He won his own Triple Crown in 1934, hitting .363 with 49 home runs and 166 RBI, and there was a real case to be made that season that he was the best hitter alive.

But Foxx finished 1934 with an OPS+ of 186 and a WAR of 8.3, meaning he wasn't exactly sitting quietly while Gehrig collected the hardware. The 1932 MVP race tells the clearest story: Foxx won it going away while Gehrig, who had an excellent season himself, finished behind him in the voting. In 1933, when Foxx took the Triple Crown and his second straight MVP, Gehrig again put up strong numbers but the voters had seen enough. Winning back-to-back MVP awards in a lineup that also included Lou Gehrig is not a coincidence. It means you were better, and the people watching every day knew it.

What separates Foxx from Gehrig across the full decade is the durability of that elite-level production and the fact that Foxx kept delivering even as Gehrig's health began to slip in the late 1930s. Gehrig's numbers dropped noticeably by 1938, and ALS ended his career entirely in 1939. Foxx meanwhile posted an OPS+ of 183 in 1938 and 188 in 1939, which means he was arguably a better hitter in his early thirties than Gehrig was during what should have been Gehrig's prime years. The career OPS+ gap favors Gehrig, and that is worth acknowledging. But sustained dominance across a specific decade is a different conversation, and in that conversation, Foxx wins.

The 1938 Bounce-Back
After a relative dip in 1936 and 1937 following his move to Boston, Foxx reminded the league exactly who he was in 1938. He hit .349 with 50 home runs and 175 RBI, posting an OPS of 1.166 and a WAR of 7.4 at age 30, doing it in Fenway Park where the Green Monster in left field actually works against right-handed power hitters rather than helping them. His production that season was earned against the ballpark, not gifted by it.

A Few Flaws Worth Noting
Foxx was not perfect, and it's worth saying so. He struck out more than his contemporaries liked, and his defensive profile was a moving target throughout his career as he shifted between first base, third base, catcher, and the outfield depending on what his team needed. His later seasons showed the effects of alcohol, which became a documented part of his life, and his decline came faster than it probably should have for a man with that kind of physical ability. He finished with a career batting average of .325, 534 home runs, and 1,922 RBI, and was elected to the Hall of Fame in 1951. His personal finances were a disaster after his playing days ended. He died on July 21, 1967, at age 59, reportedly having choked on food, and left behind almost nothing for a man who had earned serious money during his prime. It was a sad ending to a remarkable career.

The Verdict
The 1930s had great hitters. Real ones. Gehrig, Greenberg, Medwick, Klein, Arky Vaughan (SS, PIT). You can build a case for a couple of them on any given afternoon. But Foxx produced at an elite level for the entire decade, won two MVP awards, won a Triple Crown, hit 50-plus home runs twice, and never posted an OPS+ below 127 in a full season. His on-base skills matched his power, and his power was historic. If someone asks who the best hitter of the 1930s was, the answer is Jimmie Foxx. The numbers back it up. The hardware backs it up. The fact that his contemporaries called him "The Beast" backs it up. Ruth may have defined the 1920s. The 1930s belonged to Double X.