Mahaffey/Foxx/Williams/Higgins - 1935 Goudey 4-in-1 #20
1935 Goudey 4-in-1 #20 — Roy Mahaffey / Jimmie Foxx / Dib Williams / Pinky Higgins
The backs of 1935 Goudey cards are puzzle pieces, not player bios: each is marked "PICTURE N — CARD X" and builds one of the set's nine puzzles. This front was printed with 4 different backs (1B, 2B, 6B, 7B), so it counts 4 entries toward the 114-combination master set.
Puzzles 1-7 were each printed twice with different front panels, and one side of each pairing is much scarcer: for this front, 2B, 7B are the short-printed combos (per Beckett's tags and the Dec 1995 VCBC press-panel analysis).
The card & its puzzle backs
About Roy Mahaffey
Lee Roy “Popeye” Mahaffey came up from South Carolina’s textile-mill leagues — an offseason bricklayer even in his big-league years — and earned his first nickname, “Workhorse,” at Columbia of the South Atlantic League for his sheer willingness to take the ball. After brief Pirates trials in 1926–27, Connie Mack acquired him from Portland in January 1930, and Athletics players dubbed him “Speed” on a staff already boasting Grove, Walberg, and Earnshaw. A member of the 1930 World Series champions, he fanned Babe Ruth four times in a June 1930 start and went 15–4 for the 1931 pennant winners, reeling off nine straight late-season victories in a rotation Bill James called the decade’s best. In nine seasons Mahaffey went 67–49 yet never threw a shutout in 129 starts, a record that stood as late as 1992. This all-Athletics panel pairs him with Jimmie Foxx — who called him “a corking righthander” — plus Dib Williams and Pinky Higgins, catching his 3.90-ERA farewell year in Philadelphia before the 1936 waiver sale to the Browns.
Sources: Wikipedia · Baseball-Reference · SABR
About Jimmie Foxx
A Sudlersville, Maryland, farm boy signed at 16 by Frank “Home Run” Baker for Class D Easton in 1924, James Emory Foxx was in a Philadelphia Athletics uniform by age 17. Connie Mack’s catcher-turned-first-baseman anchored three straight pennant winners (1929–31) and back-to-back world champions, famously promising to “bust up” a scoreless Game Five of the 1930 World Series moments before his ninth-inning homer off Burleigh Grimes did exactly that. Sportswriters dubbed the sleeve-cutting slugger “Double X” and “The Beast” for his farm-built muscle; Lefty Gomez joked he “wasn’t scouted — he was trapped.” Foxx hit 58 home runs in 1932, took the 1933 Triple Crown (.356, 48 homers, 163 RBI) for back-to-back MVP awards, and in 1940 became the second man after Babe Ruth to reach 500 homers, retiring with 534, 1,922 RBI, and a .325 average. Goudey gave him singular billing — back-puzzle No. 6 assembles into Foxx himself — while this all-Athletics quadrant with Mahaffey, Williams, and Higgins catches his Philadelphia farewell: a league-leading 36 homers for a last-place club before the December 1935 sale to Boston, where a third MVP came in 1938. Cooperstown called in 1951.
Sources: Wikipedia · Baseball-Reference · SABR
About Dib Williams
A country doctor's son from Greenbrier, Arkansas, Edwin Dibrell “Dib” Williams quit college in January 1929 to turn pro — his father, who coached the town team, arranged his signing with the Little Rock Travelers. One season later he was a 20-year-old rookie on Connie Mack's 1930 world-champion Philadelphia Athletics. The 1931 World Series made his name: writers predicted the shortstop would buckle, but he played all seven games against the Cardinals without an error and batted .320 — among A's regulars, only Jimmie Foxx and Al Simmons hit better, fitting company for the man sharing this 4-in-1 panel with Foxx. A second baseman who covered every infield spot, Williams peaked in 1933 (.289, 11 homers, 73 RBI) and toured Japan with Ruth and Gehrig after 1934. Goudey drew him as an Athletic in the year the run ended — sold to Boston on May 1, 1935, he played his last big-league game that September 29, closing six seasons at .267 before going home to Greenbrier as an egg farmer.
Sources: Wikipedia · Baseball-Reference · SABR
About Pinky Higgins
His rosy complexion as an infant hung "Pinky" on Michael Franklin Higgins, a nickname the Texan spent a lifetime trying to shake. Signed off the University of Texas campus, he debuted with the Philadelphia Athletics on June 25, 1930, and by 1933 owned third base, batting .314 with 99 RBI and hitting for the cycle as a rookie. This card catches that Philadelphia prime: Higgins holds down the lower-right panel of Goudey's 1935 4-in-1 #20 alongside Jimmie Foxx, Roy Mahaffey, and Dib Williams. Traded to Boston for Billy Werber, he drove in 106 runs in both 1937 and 1938, and in June 1938 lashed a major-league-record 12 consecutive hits — equaled since, never broken. He hit .333 with a homer in Detroit's 1940 World Series, then started all seven games of the 1946 Series after rejoining pennant-winning Boston. A three-time All-Star, Higgins retired with 1,941 hits, 140 home runs, 1,075 RBI, and a .292 average, then managed the Red Sox between 1955 and 1962, later running Boston's front office.
Sources: Wikipedia · Baseball-Reference · SABR
Graded population (PSA & SGC)
| Grader | Total | 10 | 9 | 8 | 7 | 6 | 5 | 1-4 | Auth |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| PSA | 213 | 0 | 0 | 4 | 4 | 18 | 19 | 163 | 5 |
| SGC | 111 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 1 | 7 | 97 | 6 |
Graded population — a scarcity guide, not a price. Snapshot 2026-08-06. Half-grades fold down (8.5→8). Totals are summed across this front's graded back combinations.
PSA by back: 1B 93 · 2B (SP) 89 · 6B 12 · 7B (SP) 19
SGC by back: 1B 53 · 2B (SP) 47 · 6B 4 · 7B (SP) 7
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Related cards
More Philadelphia Athletics cards:
- #1 Charlie Berry / Bobby Burke / Red Kress / Dazzy Vance
- #15 Bob Johnson / Ed Coleman / Johnny Marcum / Doc Cramer
Other fronts in the same puzzle pictures:
- #1 Charlie Berry / Bobby Burke / Red Kress / Dazzy Vance
- #4 Mickey Cochrane / Charlie Gehringer / Tommy Bridges / Billy Rogell
- #5 Hughie Critz / Dick Bartell / Mel Ott / Gus Mancuso
- #6 Joe Cronin / Carl Reynolds / Max Bishop / Bill Cissell
- #8 George Earnshaw / Jimmy Dykes / Luke Sewell / Luke Appling
- #10 Frankie Frisch / Dizzy Dean / Ernie Orsatti / Tex Carleton
- #11 Burleigh Grimes / Chuck Klein / Kiki Cuyler / Woody English
- #14 Willis Hudlin / Glenn Myatt / Adam Comorosky / Jim Bottomley
Frequently asked questions
What is the 1935 Goudey 4-in-1 Mahaffey/Foxx/Williams/Higgins card?
It is one of the 36 unnumbered fronts of the 1935 Goudey 4-in-1 set (R321), picturing Roy Mahaffey / Jimmie Foxx / Dib Williams / Pinky Higgins. The 2-3/8 by 2-7/8 inch card carries four color portraits on the front and a puzzle piece on the back. Checklists that number the set (Old Cardboard / the Burdick Collection convention, alphabetical by the upper-left player) list it as #20 of 36.
How many backs does this card have?
4: 1B, 2B, 6B, 7B. Every 1935 Goudey front was printed with two to four different puzzle-piece backs, and collectors chasing the 114-combination master set track each front/back pairing separately. The 2B, 7B printings are short prints per Beckett and the VCBC press-panel analysis.
How many cards are in the 1935 Goudey 4-in-1 set?
36 fronts, each with four players (144 panels picturing 138 different men). Counting the two-to-four puzzle backs each front was printed with, the master set runs to 114 front/back combinations, 42 of them short prints. A complete set of all nine puzzles requires 72 different backs.
Sources: Trading Card Database, Old Cardboard, the Burdick Collection catalog (Metropolitan Museum of Art), SABR Baseball Cards research, Baseball-Reference, PSA & SGC population reports, and the Dec 1995 VCBC press-panel analysis. Card data compiled and maintained by T206Cards.com. Page last updated 2026-08-14.