At Spring Training Five Dodgers Try Out At First Base- 1963
Vero Beach, FL – (l-r) Bill Haas, Dick Nen, Ron Fairly, Bill “Moose” Skowron and Lee Walls compete for the Los Angeles Dodgers first base position at spring training. photo: The Sporting News 1963
Of the five players shown above, 24-year-old Ron Fairly would retain the Dodgers starting first baseman job. It would be Fairly’s sixth season with the club and he would play 152 games. The back-up would end up being ex-Yankee Moose Skowron who would play 89 games and hit just .203. But in the 1963 World Series the Dodgers would sweep the Yanks. Moose tormented his former team by playing in all four games hitting .385 with one homer and three RBIs.
Dick Nen would play six seasons in the majors mostly for the Washington Senators. In 1963 the 23-year-old Nen appeared in 7 games for his hometown Dodgers with one hit.
Lee Walls was in his ninth major league season and he played in 64 games for the Dodgers in 1963 mostly as a defensive replacement in left, right first and third or a s a pinch hitter or pinch runner. After the 1964 season Walls would retire at the age of 31.
Bill Haas
The mystery player here is 19-year-old Bill Haas.
Haas was a Philadelphia sandlot player who the Dodgers gave a look see in spring training because of his phenomenal rookie year in 1962 with class C Reno in the California league. Haas won the minor league batting championship hitting .368 with 33 home runs and 144 RBIs.
He did not make the Dodgers 25 man roster and was selected by The New York Mets at the end of the 1963 season in a special draft for $30,000. A possible reason the Dodgers gave up on Haas? Excellent hitter, iffy glove.
By August 1966 with a wife and young son to take care of, Haas was out of baseball and working as an Atlantic City beverage salesman.
Demotions from AAA Buffalo to AA Williamsport and then all the way down to class D Auburn were demoralizing and depressing. These were the days when the reserve clause limited a player’s options. Haas believed someone at the Mets organization didn’t like him and he was never going to get a shot at the big leagues. At age 23 Haas’s career was over. He never appeared in a major league game.
