1965 Topps #70 Bill Skowron
About Bill Skowron
Card #70 sits early in series 1 and is the first to picture Skowron as a White Sox, a homecoming set up when Washington sent him and pitcher Carl Bouldin to Chicago on July 13, 1964 for Joe Cunningham and Frank Kreutzer. The back totals a split season: .282 with 17 home runs and 79 runs batted in across 146 games. Chicago closed with nine straight wins and still finished a single game behind New York.
William Joseph Skowron, a Chicago kid of Polish descent, played fourteen major league seasons from 1954 through 1967 and spent nine of them at first base for the New York Yankees. The nickname arrived early: a crew cut from his grandfather left him looking, to his father's semi-pro teammates, like Benito Mussolini, and "Mussolini" was soon shortened to "Moose." He went to Purdue on a football scholarship, signed with the Yankees in 1950 for a $22,000 bonus, and was named The Sporting News Minor League Player of the Year in 1952. Casey Stengel platooned him at first base before he took the job outright in 1958. Skowron reached eight All-Star Games across six seasons (1957 through 1961, then 1965) and won four titles in New York, his three-run homer off Lew Burdette breaking open Game Seven of the 1958 World Series. In 1961 he, Mickey Mantle and Roger Maris, the Three M's, combined for a record 143 home runs. Traded to Los Angeles after 1962, he batted .385 as the Dodgers swept his old club for a fifth ring. He finished at .282 with 211 home runs and 888 runs batted in, entered the National Polish-American Hall of Fame in 1980, and worked for the White Sox as a community affairs representative from 1999 until his death in 2012.
Sources: SABR BioProject · Baseball-Reference · Retrosheet
Graded population (PSA & SGC)
| Grader | Total | 10 | 9 | 8 | 7 | 6 | 5 | 1-4 | Auth |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| PSA | 332 | 4 | 54 | 151 | 57 | 40 | 16 | 10 | 0 |
| SGC | 17 | 0 | 0 | 8 | 5 | 2 | 1 | 1 | 0 |
Graded population — a scarcity guide, not a price. Data as of 2026-09-04. Half grades fold down for both graders (8.5→8); PSA qualified slabs (OC, ST, PD, MC and the like) are not counted. The two checklist variations, #79 and #508, are listed under the wording PSA uses for each state.
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Related cards
Team card: #234 Chicago White Sox
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- #7 American League 1964 ERA Leaders
- #9 American League 1964 Pitching Leaders
- #41 White Sox 1965 Rookie Stars
- #58 Fred Talbot
- #81 Don Buford
- #89 Mike Hershberger
- #125 Juan Pizarro
- #146 Ron Hansen
- #183 Dave Nicholson
- #198 Smoky Burgess
- #208 Tommy John
- #215 Pete Ward
- #253 Danny Cater
- #276 Hoyt Wilhelm
Frequently asked questions
What is the 1965 Topps #70 card?
It is card #70 of the 598-card 1965 Topps Baseball set, picturing Bill Skowron of the Chicago White Sox.
How many cards are in the 1965 Topps Baseball set?
598 cards, tracked as 600 collectible states. Numbers run from 1 to 598 with no gaps and no printed-number collisions, and two checklist cards - #79 and #508 - carry catalogued print variations that the master set counts separately.
Sources: Trading Card Database, PSA CardFacts, Cardboard Connection, BaseballCardPedia, Baseball Almanac, Baseball-Reference, the SABR BioProject and the National Baseball Hall of Fame, PSA & SGC population reports. Card data compiled and maintained by T206Cards.com. Page last updated 2026-10-11.