The Main Event

  • September 3, 1928 – At age 41, Ty Cobb, playing for the Athletics, collected a pinch-hit double off Bump Hadley in a 6-1 loss to Washington at Griffith Stadium — the last hit of his career.
  • September 3, 1932 – Jimmie Foxx of the A’s hit his 50th and 51st home runs of the season off the Red Sox, becoming only the third player in history (after Babe Ruth and Hack Wilson) to reach 50 homers in a season.

Four years and one ballpark rivalry apart, two of baseball’s most towering figures each carved their names into Philadelphia Athletics history on September 3. In 1928, an aging Ty Cobb collected the final hit of a legendary career while wearing the uniform of Connie Mack’s A’s. In 1932, homegrown slugger Jimmie Foxx blasted his way past a milestone that placed him alongside Babe Ruth in the record book. Both moments happened under the same manager, in the same era of Philadelphia baseball, yet they belonged to two men who could hardly have been more different.

Ty Cobb’s Last Hit at Griffith Stadium

On September 3, 1928, Connie Mack sent 41-year-old Ty Cobb up to pinch-hit against Washington’s Bump Hadley in the ninth inning of a game the Athletics were losing 6-1 at Griffith Stadium. Cobb doubled. It was an unremarkable line in a lopsided loss, but it turned out to be the last hit of his 24-year career — traditionally counted as career hit number 4,191, though later research by baseball historians revised that figure down to 4,189. Newspapers the next morning barely noted it; there was no fanfare, no farewell tour moment, just a quiet double by an old man who still had a batting average north of .320. Cobb played out the string and retired for good eight days later.

Cobb’s arrival in Philadelphia had been anything but quiet. After 22 seasons in Detroit, Connie Mack lured him away for the 1927 season with a contract reportedly worth around $85,000 over two years – or a little over $1.6-million in today’s terms – making Cobb the highest-paid player in the game. Mack was one of the only men in baseball Cobb genuinely respected, and the feeling was mutual. Cobb rewarded the investment, hitting .357 in 133 games in 1927 as the A’s finished second to a historically dominant Yankees team, then closing out 1928 at .323 in 95 games before that pinch-hit double ended it all.

Philadelphia only got the epilogue of Cobb’s career; Detroit got the legend. Over 22 seasons with the Tigers, Cobb won a record 12 batting titles and retired with a .366 career batting average, long considered the highest in major league history until Negro Leagues statistics were formally incorporated into MLB’s record book decades later. He held more than 40 major league records at his retirement and was elected to the Hall of Fame’s inaugural class in 1936 with more votes than any other player, including Ruth. His reputation as a vicious, spikes-first base runner became baseball legend, though much of that mythology traces back to a later biographer’s exaggerations; teammates and opponents who actually played with and against him described a fierce, calculating competitor rather than the villain of popular memory.

Jimmie Foxx Chases Ruth on September 3, 1932

Four years after Cobb’s finale, Shibe Park hosted a very different kind of milestone. On September 3, 1932, Jimmie Foxx crushed his 50th and 51st home runs of the season against the Red Sox, becoming just the third player in history — after Ruth and Hack Wilson — to reach 50 in a season. His second homer of the day tied the game in the ninth inning, and Eric McNair followed with a walk-off shot to win it.

The pair of blasts were part of a furious late-season chase of Ruth’s single-season record of 60, a mark Foxx would finish two shy of, hitting 58. Foxx and his supporters long insisted he actually hit 60 that year, pointing to at least two home runs erased by rainouts and several more robbed by a newly built screen in St. Louis’s Sportsman’s Park. Whether or not the record technically fell, the 1932 season earned Foxx the first of back-to-back American League MVP awards.

Unlike Cobb, Foxx was Connie Mack’s own creation. He debuted with the Athletics in 1925 as a 17-year-old pinch hitter and backup catcher, and Mack patiently groomed him on the bench for several seasons before turning him loose as an everyday first baseman in 1929. Foxx promptly became the anchor of a dynasty, powering the A’s to three straight American League pennants from 1929 to 1931 and two World Series titles. His raw strength earned him the nickname “The Beast” and drew comparisons to Ruth throughout his career, before the Depression-era A’s broke apart and Mack sold him to the Red Sox in 1935.

For all the menace of his nickname and his physique, Foxx was remembered by nearly everyone who knew him as one of the kindest men in the game. He picked up dinner tabs for entire rosters, tipped bellhops and batboys generously, and was known to give the literal shirt off his back to anyone who asked. Teammates recalled him as a peacemaker who defused clubhouse arguments and looked out for rookies. It was a striking contrast to the fear his swing struck into opposing pitchers.

Two Legends, Two Very Different Men

Stylistically, the two sluggers had little in common. Cobb was a calculating contact hitter and base thief who sprayed the ball to all fields and terrorized infields with his legs; Foxx was pure, brute power, a right-handed hitter whose home runs were measured in the hundreds of feet. Their personalities diverged just as sharply. Cobb was intense, short-tempered, and famously difficult, a man admired more than he was loved. Foxx was gregarious and generous, beloved by nearly every teammate he had.

Their later lives diverged even more painfully. Cobb turned his baseball fortune into one of the great investment portfolios in American sports history, growing early stakes in Coca-Cola and General Motors into a fortune worth tens of millions by the time of his death in 1961 — yet he died largely alone, twice divorced, and reportedly full of regret over the friendships his temper had cost him. Foxx, by contrast, lost most of his money to bad investments and alcoholism following a career-altering beaning in 1941, and died in 1967 at just 59, choking on food at his brother’s dinner table in an eerie echo of his wife’s death the year before.

What links them permanently is Philadelphia. Both men wore the elephant on their chest under Connie Mack, both are enshrined in Cooperstown, and both, four years apart, turned September 3 into a date worth remembering in Athletics history — one closing out a legend, the other opening a new chapter in the chase for baseball immortality.

Philadelphia Baseball Events for September 3

  • September 3, 1917 – At Shibe Park, the A’s drew their biggest crowd in three years and swept a doubleheader from the Senators, 7-4 and 9-2; Joe Bush started after being reinstated by Connie Mack from a two-week suspension.
  • September 3, 1917 – Phillies pitcher Grover Cleveland Alexander won both ends of a doubleheader against the Dodgers, 5-0 and 9-3, issuing just one walk in the twin bill.
  • September 3, 1947 – A’s rookie Bill McCahan no-hit the Washington Senators 3-0 at Shibe Park, his bid for a perfect game undone only by a second-inning throwing error.
  • September 3, 1952 – Harry Byrd of the A’s one-hit the Yankees 3-0 at Shibe Park, allowing only a double to Irv Noren.
  • September 3, 1957 – The Phillies beat the Dodgers 3-2 in 12 innings, the last major league game ever played in Jersey City, N.J.
  • September 3, 1972 – Steve Carlton beat Atlanta 8-0 for his eighth shutout of the year, the most by a Phillies pitcher in the live-ball (post-1920) era.
  • September 3, 1977 – The Phillies’ 9-3 win over Cincinnati extended their home winning streak to a team-record 16 games.
  • September 3, 2002 – In the eighth inning at Olympic Stadium, the Expos caught Placido Polanco and Travis Lee off first and third for the last triple play in Montreal history, part of an inning that began with a Marlon Anderson strikeout.
  • September 3, 2006 – Ryan Howard homered in his first three at-bats, becoming the 17th Phillie with three home runs in a single game.
  • September 3, 2020 – The Phillies lost catcher Deivy Grullon off waivers to Boston.

ICYMI

Philadelphia Baseball Birthdays for September 3

  • Harry Decker (born 1864) – Catcher who played briefly for the Phillies in 1889-90 before finishing his career in Pittsburgh; widely credited as the inventor of the catcher’s mitt.
  • Billy Goeckel (born 1871) – First baseman whose entire 37-game MLB career came with the 1899 Phillies; a University of Pennsylvania standout who later wrote the melody for Penn’s fight song “The Red and Blue.”
  • Ed Konetchy (born 1885) – Slugging first baseman who closed out a 15-year career with a partial 1921 season in Philadelphia after stops with several other NL clubs.
  • Morrie Martin (born 1922) – Left-handed pitcher who spent four seasons (1951-1954) with the Philadelphia Athletics, twice winning in double digits before being traded away in the franchise’s final year in the city.
  • Alan Bannister (born 1951) – The Phillies’ number one overall pick in the January 1973 draft, he debuted as a shortstop-turned-utility man in 1974 before being dealt to the White Sox for Jim Kaat after 1975.
  • Nate Robertson (born 1977) – Left-handed pitcher who closed out his nine-year MLB career with two relief outings for the Phillies in September 2010.
  • Domonic Brown (born 1987) – Outfielder who spent his entire six-year MLB career with the Phillies, earning his only All-Star nod in 2013 after a torrid 39-game stretch and finishing that season with 27 homers and 83 RBI.

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