We used to wrestle once in a while, and Jimmie could break you in two. He hit 534 home runs in his career and it was no secret where his power came from. Foxx could take his arm and make a muscle that would curl up damn near to the size of a cannon ball. Jimmie Foxx was a beast with a bat in his hands, a big, strong guy on the outside and soft as silk on the inside.

I remember one day when I wish Foxx had stayed in his hotel room. He was playing for the Philadelphia A's and I was pitching for the Tigers. I had a perfect game going until he led off the eighth with a double off the wall. We were leading 13-0 at the time, so the only suspense left was whether I could get into the history books. When Foxx banged that ball off the wall, the crowd booed him pretty good, and a lot of people got up and headed home. I'm sure he broke up a lot of no-hitters in his day, plenty of them with home runs.

We would go out after a game once in a while and have a beer or two, but I never saw him drink much at all. I never met a nicer guy in my life. I never heard Jimmie Foxx say a bad word about anybody. He was always smiling, had a great sense of humor.

He was another one who never set himself up for a post-baseball career, and it came back to haunt him. We lost touch after we were out of the game and I'm told he took to the bottle, same as Tommy Bridges. I didn't hear much about him, but I was told he was trying to coach a team in the All-American Girls Professional Baseball League and was broke and drinking heavily. I was told he died choking on a piece of meat, destitute.

He deserved such a better ending than that, for I never knew a finer man than James Emory Foxx, my roommate, a man who gave me so many pleasant memories and a name for my only child.

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