Former M.U. Letterman Dies

Former M.U. Letterman Dies
(Columbia Daily Tribune, December 6, 1996)

Bob Schoonmaker was the last Tiger to play three sports.

Former M.U. athletic legend Bob Schoonmaker, 64, died Thursday morning.

Bob Schoonmaker was one of the three-sport lettermen that we've had at the University of Missouri in the history of our sports," said M.U. basketball coach Norm Stewart.

Schoonmaker was the last three-sport athlete at M.U. He earned eight letters in football (1951-53), baseball (1952-54) and basketball (1953-54).

Schoonmaker, from Lebanon, Mo., was an all-Big Seven infielder when M.U. won the College World Series in 1954. That was the school's first national championship in any sport.

Schoonmaker was the last player to captain the football team for a two-year period before Dick Chapura completed the feat in 1985-86.

"It was different then," said Stewart, who also was a member of the M.U. team which won the College World Series. "You could play two sports if you had the talent and the ability. Very few people have that. He had the ability to play three. He was very unique."

Schoonmaker was inducted into the Missouri Intercollegiate Athletics Hall of Fame in 1991. Despite his enormous success, Schoonmaker never basked in his own glory.

"In my years, he was the person who had the most integrity in the way he played and the way he conducted his life," Stewart said. "He never was pretentious. Even until the end, I don't think he ever told his family about some of the outstanding things that he did."


"After going 17-3 in the regular season, the team headed to Omaha, Neb., itching for a do-over of 1952. MU, you see, had made it to the NCAA title game against Holy Cross, a game the Tigers expected to win. An 8-4 shellshocking later, the team was headed back to Columbia. Lovable losers.

Two years later, with that scar still visible, MU returned for Part Deux.

"When we went back in 1954, I know (team member) Bob Schoonmaker and I talked and said, 'Boy, it would sure be nice to win this game and say we're No. 1 in the country,'" team captain Dick Dickinson said. "We went in figuring we have as good a chance as anyone."
(Columbia Daily Tribune, December 31, 1999)


Holy Cross Again Beats Tigers for NCAA Championship
Schoonmaker Blasts Homer and Triple
(Columbia Daily Tribune, June 18, 1952)

Eleven rugged men from Holy Cross today ruled as champions of college baseball.

The Crusaders last night defeated Missouri, 8-4, for the NCAA title.

Holy Cross was off to a 3-0 lead at the end of the second inning last night and held it until the fifth when Bob Schoonmaker belted a 375-foot homer for Missouri's first score. The Tigers got a second run the same inning.

In the sixth, Bob Schoonmaker was good for a tremendous smash, this time a 400-foot triple that scored one run. Schoonmaker himself scored shortly afterward.

But the Crusaders, whose eight hits were all singles, got to Missouri starter Dick Atkinson for three more runs in the seventh, and to reliefer (sic) Bert Beckman for two in the ninth.