Courtesy Kingston Daily Freeman

(August 30, 2010) When Bill Mazer held forth as New York’s far-and-away premier sportscaster, he was known as “The Amazin’” and it had nothing to do with an alleged baseball team from Flushing.

What earned the Brooklyn-bred his Amazin’ monicker was his uncanny ability to answer on the air or offhand virtually any trivia question related to sports.

I kid you not, having watched Mazer in action on many occasions, as a personal friend and fellow broadcaster.

To this day, Amazin’ is a sobriquet that still works for Mazer.

Pushing 90 years old, he is sharper than those wise guy whippersnapper, radio sports-talkers we unfortunately have foisted on us today.

What’s more, he can back up his comments about Joe DiMaggio, Jackie Robinson and Mel Ott - to name a few Hall of Famers - because unlike contemporary braggert broadcasting bozos, Bill Mazer was there.

Semi-retired, these days Mazer chuckles when I remind him of a stunt he pulled that still remains a broadcasting classic.

He was airing a CBS network hockey game from Chicago and happened to report that the Stadium’s clock was so antiquated that a sun dial might have been more accurate.

As luck would have it, the Blackhawks general manager, Tommy Ivan, took such a dim view of the “antique” clock comments, that he decided to wreak revenge.

But how?

AT game’s end it was Mazer’s job to interview the star of the contest at center ice.

“It happened to be (Hall of Famer) Stan Mikita”, Mazer recalls. “He was supposed to skate over to me and take a few questions.”

As it happened, Mikita and Mazer were longtime friends, so there should have been no problem there. BUT.

Mazer:

“Ivan wouldn’t allow Mikita, nor any of his players, to talk to me and I found this out a couple of seconds before I came back on the air. I knew I had to do something fast, and I did.”

I was watching the game at home and saw what Mazer did. It was amazing to say the least.

He pretended that Mikita was there next to him and Mazer played both himself and the player. The interview with himself went like this:

Mazer: So, Stan, what did you think of the win?

Then, Mazer moved to where Mikita would have been standing and made believe he (Mazer) was the Blackhawk.

Mikita played by Mazer: “Well, Bill, we got the goaltending when we needed it and I got lucky with a couple of goals.”

For at least two minutes, Mazer executed a virtuoso verbal game of Ping Pong with himself that captivated the audience - if not the Chicago brass.

“I knew Mikita well enough,” adds Mazer, “that I could virtually say word for word his answers.”

Likewise, New York sports fans knew that Mazer had all the answers on his “Sports Extra” Sunday night TV program for years and later on WFAN radio.

Up until a year or so ago, he still was going strong with a radio show in Westchester County.

Not surprisingly, as he reaches his ninth decade, Mazer still has broadcasting and writing projects in the works.

A master storyteller, Mazer has - as Al Jolson liked to say ”got a million of them.”

The following is right from Bill’s brain to you:

“I had the good fortune to see the 1934 All-Star Game at the Polo Grounds- this was only the second All-Star Game ever - and King Carl Hubbell was the star of this game. “But Hubbell was not the reason I had so eagerly schlepped from Brooklyn to Harlem for the game. The reason was Van Lingle Mungo, the Dodgers’ right-hander from Pageland, South Carolina, who was big and strapping and could throw the ball tremendously hard. Mungo had become a Dodger in 1931 and caught the fancy of the fans, even though the Dodgers didn’t win many ball games for him. Still, Mungo managed 16 wins in 1933 and 18 in 1934 - good enough to be named to the All-Star team.

“I knew how important Hubbell was, but in my infinite Dodger-fan wisdom, I didn’t think he could hold a candle to Mungo. I figured if Van Mungo had been on the Giants, he’d have been the biggest winner in the majors.

“But it was Carl Hubbell who stole the show. Talk about unforgettable experiences, this was it.

“The first two guys up for the American League, Charlie Gehringer and Heinie Manush, reached base. The third American League All-Star batter was Babe Ruth. Hubbell bore down and struck out El Bambino, but King Carl’s troubles were far from over. Coming up next was one of the great power hitters of all time, Lou Gehrig.

“The crowd held its breath and then - Whiff! Whiff! Whiff!- Gehrig was strikeout victim number two. The packed Polo Grounds was going wild, because there were two outs and the batter was none other than Jimmie Foxx, who could hit the ball as hard as Ruth and Gehrig.

“Sure enough, Foxx was strikeout victim number three. I can still hear the ovation King Carl received as he strode off the mound. Even the Dodger fans were cheering for him!

“Hubbell stayed in his strikeout groove into the top of the second inning. His first victim was Al Simmons of the Chicago White Sox, followed by Joe Cronin of the Washington Senators.

“The next batter, Bill Dickey of the Yankees, came through with a single, but King Carl next faced Lefty Gomez and struck him out. I had seen six American League All-Stars go down swinging in the first two innings.

“Hubbell would go on to pitch three innings, by which time the National League was winning, 4-0. To show you what a difference Hubbell made, his successors were clobbered royally and the American League ended up winning, 9-7!”

I’ll have a few more classic Mazer baseball stories next week.

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