This is in response to “Bill ‘Moose’ Skowron 1930-2012; Chicago favorite an 8-time All-Star; Played for Yanks, Dodgers, White Sox” (Sports, April 29). The tribute to Skowron triggered a personal recollection.
Some 25 years ago, as a part-time sportswriter, I interviewed Skowron when he visited Milwaukee to play in an old-timers charity game.
“Hi Tommy,” he said when we first met (even though I’d just introduced myself as Tom), exuding warmth and somehow making me feel like a baseball insider. Our conversation touched on Bill’s college days as a baseball and football player; his first major league manager, the legendary Casey Stengel; his good buddy Roger Maris’ difficulties en route to eclipsing Babe Ruth’s single-season home-run record in 1961; the puzzlement Bill still experienced, more than two decades later, at having been traded away by his beloved New York Yankees.
Skowron also addressed his nickname. It had nothing to do with Bill’s size but stemmed from a short haircut his paternal grandfather gave him during his Chicago boyhood — a haircut that made him resemble (or so friends thought) the Italian dictator Mussolini. “Moose” Skowron, it seems, should have been “Muss” Skowron.
— Tom Jozwik, Wauwatosa, Wis.
