April 27

A six-day lull in Game action came to an end when three hitters turned up
in the Greater Chicago area to claim a two-point hit from former
professional baseball player Bill "Moose" Skowron, the owner of five World Series
rings, and who appeared in eight All Stars games during a career that began in
1954 and ended in 1967. Sjowron spent the majority of his career with the
New York Yankees and played with such greats as Yogi Berra, Mickey Mantle
and Roger Maris.

This was a case of the rich getting richer as all three hitters were firmly
in the Top Ten before Skowron handed them a deuce.

The Game leader, the High Plains Drifter, scored his third hit of the
month and improved to 27 & 10. He is the first to reach double digit hits for
the season. The second-place Omega Travel managed to maintain the pace set
by the leader and matched the deuce as his score rose to 23 & 7.

The other hitter was those fabulous Beverlys. They climbed four spots up
the scoreboard and moved into a tie for fourth-place with Pontius at 20 &
7.

Video:

Interview with Bill Skowron _http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5DoSho3E1P8_
(http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5DoSho3E1P8)

1961 World Series footage _http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NO8yTet-9Yg_
(http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NO8yTet-9Yg)


The Obituary (New York Times)

Bill Skowron, Slugger in Yankee Golden Era, Dies at 81

Ramsay de Give for The New York Times
Bill Skowron, right, with Whitey Ford at Old-Timers’ Day at Yankee Stadium
last June.
By _RICHARD GOLDSTEIN_
(http://topics.nytimes.com/top/reference/timestopics/people/g/richard_goldstein/index.html?inline=nyt-per)
Published: April 27, 2012


Bill Skowron, the slugging first baseman who played on seven
pennant-winning teams with the _Yankees_
(http://topics.nytimes.com/top/news/sports/baseball/majorleague/newyorkyankees/index.html?inline=nyt-org) in the 1950s and
early ’60s, died on Friday in Arlington Heights, Ill. He was 81.


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Marty Lederhandler/Associated Press
Mr. Skowron with the Dodgers’ Roy Campanella before an exhibition at
Ebbets Field.

His death, at a hospital, resulted from congestive heart failure, although
he had recently been treated for cancer, his son Greg said.
Known for a scowl and a muscular frame that presumably intimidated
opposing pitchers, _Skowron_
(http://www.baseball-reference.com/players/s/skowrbi01.shtml) hit 211 home runs in 14 major league seasons and batted .300 five
times as a Yankee.
He played for Managers Casey Stengel and Ralph Houk on Yankee teams that
won four World Series, and his right-handed power hitting added to the woes
of pitchers facing lineups with the switch-hitting Mickey Mantle and the
left-handed-hitting Yogi Berra and Roger Maris.
Skowron was nicknamed Moose — but not because of his imposing
5-foot-11-inch, 195-pound physique. The name had to do with his resemblance of sorts to
a world figure with a shaved head.
“When I was about 8 years old living in Chicago, my grandfather gave all
the haircuts to his grandchildren,” Skowron told John Tullius for the oral
history “I’d Rather Be a Yankee.” “He shaved off all my hair. I was
completely bald. When I got outside, all the older fellows around the
neighborhood started calling me Mussolini. At that time, he was the dictator of Italy.
So after that, in grammar school, high school and college, everybody
called me Moose.”
Fans liked to chant his nickname when he came to bat, which could
sometimes confuse the nonfans. “When I played for the White Sox,” he once told
Baseball Digest, “my grandmother thought everyone in the crowd was going boo.
I said: ‘No, Grandma, it’s all right. They like me. They’re saying Moose.’
She was so relieved.”
Skowron was named an All-Star every season from 1957 to 1961 with the
Yankees and again in 1965 with the Chicago White Sox. He was at his best in the
World Series, hitting 8 home runs and driving in 29 runs in 39 games.
In 1956, he hit a grand slam to help propel the Yankees to a Game 7
victory over the Brooklyn Dodgers. In 1958, he drove in the eventual winning run
in Game 6 against the Milwaukee Braves, then hit a three-run homer in the
Yankees’ Game 7 triumph, capping their comeback from a 3-games-to-1 deficit.
In 1963, after being traded by the Yankees to the Dodgers, he hit .385
with a home run in Los Angeles’s four-game World Series sweep of the Yankees.
William Joseph Skowron was born on Dec. 18, 1930, in Chicago, where his
father was a sanitation worker and an outstanding semipro baseball player.
He went to Purdue on a football scholarship and played halfback, punted
and place-kicked. But he became a collegiate star in baseball, playing
shortstop and pitching, and the Yankee organization signed him in 1950 after he
won the Big Ten batting championship. He made his Yankee debut in 1954,
alternating at first base with Joe Collins.
Skowron’s best season was 1960, when he hit .309 with 26 home runs, then
hit .375 with two homers against Pittsburgh in a World Series remembered
mostly for Bill Mazeroski’s Series-ending home run in Game 7.
Even the best pitchers found Skowron intimidating.
“Moose Skowron wasn’t someone you wanted to face too often,” the Detroit
Tigers right-hander Frank Lary, known as the Yankee Killer for his many
dominant pitching performances against them, was quoted as saying by Richard
Lally in “Bombers: An Oral History of the New York Yankees.” “He wasn’t
just a big slugger trying to hit the long ball all the time. Smart hitter,
went with the pitch, thought along with the pitcher, and could hit the ball
the other way as hard as anyone. And Moose was underrated at first. He had
real soft hands and could dig tough chances out of the dirt.”
Playing for the Yankees, the Dodgers, the Washington Senators, the White
Sox and the California Angels, Skowron had 1,566 career hits, 888 runs
batted in and a .282 batting average.
After retiring as a player, he held sales and promotional jobs, and he was
a community affairs representative for the White Sox at his death.
In addition to his son Greg, Skowron, who lived in Schaumburg, Ill., is
survived by his wife, Lorraine, known as Cookie; his daughter, Lynnette
Skowron Morgan; his son Steve; his brother, Edward; and four grandchildren.
Notwithstanding his menacing presence, Skowron was a gentle person, and he
harbored no feelings of revenge after hammering his former Yankee
teammates in the 1963 World Series.
“I was miserable,” he recalled in “Bombers.”
“Twelve years I was with New York, three in the minors, nine in the
majors. I loved those guys and it killed me to beat them. My uniform might have
said Los Angeles, but in my heart I was always a Yankee.”