Bill Mazer (born Morris Mazer; November 2, 1920 – October 23, 2013) was an American television and radio personality. He won numerous awards and citations, including three

National Sportscasters and Sportswriters Association The National Sports Media Association (NSMA), formerly the National Sportscasters and Sportswriters Association, is an organization of sports media members in the United States, and constitutes the American chapter of the International Sports P ...

's Sportscaster of the Year awards for New York from 1964–66. Considered a New York institution in sports reporting, Mazer was inducted into the hall of fame for the Buffalo Broadcasters Association (1999), Buffalo Baseball Hall of Fame (2000) and the

National Jewish Sports Hall of Fame and Museum The National Jewish Sports Hall of Fame and Museum, in Commack, New York, is dedicated to honoring American Jewish figures who have distinguished themselves in sports. Its objective is to foster Jewish identity through athletics, and to commemo ...

(1997). He is also recognized as the host of the first sports talk radio show in history that launched in March 1964 on

WNBC (AM) WFAN (660 AM) is a commercial radio station licensed to New York, New York, carrying a sports radio format known as "Sports Radio 66 AM and 101.9 FM" or "The Fan". Owned by Audacy, Inc., the station serves the New York metropolitan area while ...

. Mazer earned the nickname "The A-Maz-In" for his deep knowledge of sports

trivia Trivia is information and data that are considered to be of little value. It can be contrasted with general knowledge and common sense. Latin Etymology The ancient Romans used the word ''triviae'' to describe where one road split or forke ...

. This was made evident while hosting his WNBC radio show in the 1960s. Based on this, he wrote several sports trivia books, including ''Bill Mazer's Amazin' Baseball Book: 150 Years of Baseball Tales & Trivia'' published by

Zebra Books Zebra Books is an imprint of American publisher Kensington Publishing Corp. As the company's flagship imprint until the late 80s, it currently publishes women's fiction, romantic suspense and bestselling historical, paranormal and contemporary ro ...

in 1990.

Background

Mazer's family left Kiev, emigrating before his first birthday. He grew up in

Brooklyn Brooklyn () is a borough of New York City, coextensive with Kings County, in the U.S. state of New York. Kings County is the most populous county in the State of New York, and the second-most densely populated county in the United States, be ...

New York New York most commonly refers to: * New York City, the most populous city in the United States, located in the state of New York * New York (state), a state in the northeastern United States New York may also refer to: Film and television * '' ...

. A graduate of

Yeshiva University High School for Boys The Marsha Stern Talmudical Academy, also known as Yeshiva University High School for Boys (YUHSB), MTA (Manhattan Talmudical Academy) or TMSTA, is an Orthodox Jewish day school (or yeshiva) and the boys' prep school of Yeshiva University (YU) ...

, he received a BA at

University of Michigan , mottoeng = "Arts, Knowledge, Truth" , former_names = Catholepistemiad, or University of Michigania (1817–1821) , budget = $10.3 billion (2021) , endowment = $17 billion (2021)As o ...

for premed before being drafted. During

World War II World War II or the Second World War, often abbreviated as WWII or WW2, was a world war that lasted from 1939 to 1945. It involved the World War II by country, vast majority of the world's countries—including all of the great power ...

, he served the majority of his time in the

Armed Forces A military, also known collectively as armed forces, is a heavily armed, highly organized force primarily intended for warfare. It is typically authorized and maintained by a sovereign state, with its members identifiable by their distinct ...

Air Force An air force – in the broadest sense – is the national military branch that primarily conducts aerial warfare. More specifically, it is the branch of a nation's armed services that is responsible for aerial warfare as distinct from an ...

Transport Command in the Pacific theatre. After returning home, he married Dora Sudarsky ("Dutch"), his pre-war sweetheart. They had three children. Their marriage lasted 50 years until Sudarsky's death from

cancer Cancer is a group of diseases involving abnormal cell growth with the potential to invade or spread to other parts of the body. These contrast with benign tumors, which do not spread. Possible signs and symptoms include a lump, abnormal b ...

on April 28, 1996. The

New York Knickerbockers The New York Knickerbockers were one of the first organized baseball teams which played under a set of rules similar to the game today. Founded as the "Knickerbocker Base Ball Club" by Alexander Cartwright in 1845, the team remained active unti ...

observed a moment of silence during their May 1, 1996 Playoff game. Mazer never remarried.

Career

Early work

Mazer's broadcasting career began in 1942, broadcasting in Grand Rapids, Michigan before joining the United States Military that same year. His career as a sportscaster began in

Buffalo, New York Buffalo is the second-largest city in the U.S. state of New York (behind only New York City) and the seat of Erie County. It is at the eastern end of Lake Erie, at the head of the Niagara River, and is across the Canadian border from Sou ...

in 1947, where he signed on as a sportscaster on WKBW. In 1947, he was also the commercial announcer on the

CBS CBS Broadcasting Inc., commonly shortened to CBS, the abbreviation of its former legal name Columbia Broadcasting System, is an American commercial broadcast television and radio network serving as the flagship property of the CBS Entertainm ...

William L. Shirer William Lawrence Shirer (; February 23, 1904 – December 28, 1993) was an American journalist and war correspondent. He wrote ''The Rise and Fall of the Third Reich'', a history of Nazi Germany that has been read by many and cited in scholarly w ...

Newscast, as well as the commercial announcer for the

soap opera A soap opera, or ''soap'' for short, is a typically long-running radio or television Serial (radio and television), serial, frequently characterized by melodrama, ensemble casts, and sentimentality. The term "soap opera" originated from radio drama ...

, ''

When a Girl Marries ''When a Girl Marries'' is an American daytime radio drama that was broadcast on three major radio networks from 1939 to 1957. Created by Elaine Sterne Carrington (who also was responsible for '' Pepper Young's Family'' and ''Rosemary''), it was t ...

.'' By 1948, he had also become the sports director for WGR radio and served as principal sports anchor for

WGR-TV WGRZ (channel 2) is a television station in Buffalo, New York, United States, affiliated with NBC and owned by Tegna Inc. The station's studios are located on Delaware Avenue in downtown Buffalo, and its transmitter is located on Warner Hill Ro ...

from the time that station signed on in 1954 through the early 1960s. Mazer dominated the airwaves in Buffalo, broadcasting the hockey and baseball Buffalo Bisons, the All-American Football Conference Buffalo Bills and Little 3 Basketball. With years of

play-by-play In sports broadcasting, a sports commentator (also known as sports announcer or sportscaster) provides a real-time commentary of a game or event, usually during a live broadcast, traditionally delivered in the historical present tense. Radio was ...

and

sports Sport pertains to any form of competitive physical activity or game that aims to use, maintain, or improve physical ability and skills while providing enjoyment to participants and, in some cases, entertainment to spectators. Sports can, ...

commentary in Buffalo under his belt, Mazer arrived in

New York City New York, often called New York City or NYC, is the List of United States cities by population, most populous city in the United States. With a 2020 population of 8,804,190 distributed over , New York City is also the L ...

in 1964 when

went to its first all-talk format. His show was one of the pioneer examples of the modern sports

talk show A talk show (or chat show in British English) is a television programming or radio programming genre structured around the act of spontaneous conversation.Bernard M. Timberg, Robert J. Erler'' (2010Television Talk: A History of the TV Talk Sh ...

America The United States of America (U.S.A. or USA), commonly known as the United States (U.S. or US) or America, is a country primarily located in North America. It consists of 50 states, a federal district, five major unincorporated territori ...

. After filling in for

Hugh Downs Hugh Malcolm Downs (February 14, 1921July 1, 2020) was an American radio and television broadcaster, announcer and programmer; television host; news anchor; TV producer; author; game show host; talk show sidekick; and music composer. A regular t ...

on the

NBC The National Broadcasting Company (NBC) is an American English-language commercial broadcast television and radio network. The flagship property of the NBC Entertainment division of NBCUniversal, a division of Comcast, its headquarters are l ...

game show A game show is a genre of broadcast viewing entertainment (radio, television, internet, stage or other) where contestants compete for a reward. These programs can either be participatory or demonstrative and are typically directed by a host, ...

Concentration In chemistry, concentration is the abundance of a constituent divided by the total volume of a mixture. Several types of mathematical description can be distinguished: '' mass concentration'', '' molar concentration'', ''number concentration'', ...

'', he was given his own show, '' Reach for the Stars'', in January 1967, but the show was quickly cancelled. Mazer also filled in for segments of the long-running

NBC Radio The National Broadcasting Company's NBC Radio Network (known as the NBC Red Network prior to 1942) was an American commercial radio network which was in operation from 1926 through 2004. Along with the NBC Blue Network it was one of the first tw ...

series ''

Monitor Monitor or monitor may refer to: Places * Monitor, Alberta * Monitor, Indiana, town in the United States * Monitor, Kentucky * Monitor, Oregon, unincorporated community in the United States * Monitor, Washington * Monitor, Logan County, West ...

'', even hosting on occasion.

National sportscasting and announcing

Mazer served as a

color analyst A color commentator or expert commentator is a sports commentator who assists the main (play-by-play) commentator, typically by filling in when play is not in progress. The phrase "colour commentator" is primarily used in Canadian English and the ...

and intermission host, working alongside Dan Kelly on

National Hockey League The National Hockey League (NHL; french: Ligue nationale de hockey—LNH, ) is a professional ice hockey sports league, league in North America comprising 32 teams—25 in the United States and 7 in Canada. It is considered to be the top ranke ...

coverage from the late sixties until the early seventies, broadcasting the

Stanley Cup playoffs The Stanley Cup playoffs (french: Les séries éliminatoires de la Coupe Stanley) is an elimination tournament in the National Hockey League (NHL) consisting of four rounds of best-of-seven series to determine the league champion and the winner ...

a few times. Among the memorable games he covered was Game #4 of the 1970 Stanley Cup finals, famously won by the Boston Bruins on Bobby Orr's iconic overtime goal on May 10, 1970.

Golf Golf is a club-and-ball sport in which players use various clubs to hit balls into a series of holes on a course in as few strokes as possible. Golf, unlike most ball games, cannot and does not use a standardized playing area, and coping wi ...

was another Mazer specialty on

, including the U.S. Open and

Bing Crosby Harry Lillis "Bing" Crosby Jr. (May 3, 1903 – October 14, 1977) was an American singer, musician and actor. The first multimedia star, he was one of the most popular and influential musical artists of the 20th century worldwide. He was a ...

tournaments in the mid-1960s. ABC used Mazer for its regional New York football lineup in the late 1960s. Mazer also did sideline reporting for CBS coverage of the NFL in the late 1960s. During the 1960s and 1970s, Mazer did much

voice-over Voice-over (also known as off-camera or off-stage commentary) is a production technique where a voice—that is not part of the narrative (non- diegetic)—is used in a radio, television production, filmmaking, theatre, or other presentation ...

commercial Commercial may refer to: * a dose of advertising conveyed through media (such as - for example - radio or television) ** Radio advertisement ** Television advertisement * (adjective for:) commerce, a system of voluntary exchange of products and s ...

work, from L&M Cigarettes,

Kodak The Eastman Kodak Company (referred to simply as Kodak ) is an American public company that produces various products related to its historic basis in analogue photography. The company is headquartered in Rochester, New York, and is incorpor ...

Ford Ford commonly refers to: * Ford Motor Company, an automobile manufacturer founded by Henry Ford * Ford (crossing), a shallow crossing on a river Ford may also refer to: Ford Motor Company * Henry Ford, founder of the Ford Motor Company * Ford F ...

automobiles to

Trident A trident is a three- pronged spear. It is used for spear fishing and historically as a polearm. The trident is the weapon of Poseidon, or Neptune, the God of the Sea in classical mythology. The trident may occasionally be held by other mar ...

chewing gum, among many others.

WNEW-TV

Mazer was a sportcaster at New York's WNEW/

WNYW-TV WNYW (channel 5) is a television station in New York City, serving as the flagship of the Fox network. It is owned and operated by the network's Fox Television Stations division alongside Secaucus, New Jersey–licensed MyNetworkTV flagship WWO ...

(

Metromedia Metromedia (also often MetroMedia) was an American media company that owned radio and television stations in the United States from 1956 to 1986 and controlled Orion Pictures from 1988 to 1997. Metromedia was established in 1956 after the DuMon ...

/ Fox Channel 5) for twenty years, ending in the early 1990s. He also co-hosted the program ''Sports Extra'', which originally teamed him up with

Lee Leonard Lee Leonard (April 3, 1929 – December 16, 2018) was an American television personality who was involved in the launch of cable television networks ESPN and CNN. Early life Leonard was born Maxwell Lefkowitz on April 3, 1929, in New York City, ...

and then later with Brian Madden (1976–78), respectively. ''Sports Extra'' is also considered to have been the first "sports wrap-up" show of its kind. While doing sports for ''The 10 O'Clock News'' on WNEW in the late 1970s and '80s, he held a daily contest where a viewer would send in a question to "stump" Bill and would win a prize if he or she did. Usually the submitted question was asked by anchorman

John Roland John Roland (born 1941) is an American former news presenter and reporter. Career Roland is a Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania native who graduated from California State University at Long Beach in 1964; he began his broadcasting career in the 1960s. His ...

WFAN (1988-1991; 2007) and WEVD (1992-2001)

Mazer hosted a

WFAN WFAN (660 AM) is a commercial radio station licensed to New York, New York, carrying a sports radio format known as "Sports Radio 66 AM and 101.9 FM" or "The Fan". Owned by Audacy, Inc., the station serves the New York metropolitan area while ...

sports show from

Mickey Mantle Mickey Charles Mantle (October 20, 1931 – August 13, 1995), nicknamed "the Commerce Comet" and "the Mick", was an American professional baseball player. Mantle played his entire Major League Baseball (MLB) career (1951–1968) with the New York ...

's restaurant from 1988 to 1991, and returned to the station on June 30, 2007 to host an hour-long show from 10–11 AM during the station's 20th anniversary celebration and reunion weekend. He was also a morning talk show host on

WEVD WEVD was an American brokered programming radio station with some news-talk launched in August 1927 by the Socialist Party of America. Making use of the initials of recently deceased party leader Eugene Victor Debs in its call sign, the statio ...

, where he expanded to a comprehensive liberal talk format from 1992 to 2001. The show ended when WEVD was optioned to ABC's

ESPN ESPN (originally an initialism for Entertainment and Sports Programming Network) is an American international basic cable sports channel owned by ESPN Inc., owned jointly by The Walt Disney Company (80%) and Hearst Communications (20%). The ...

division and became sports station WEPN. He appeared on the

cable TV Cable television is a system of delivering television programming to consumers via radio frequency (RF) signals transmitted through coaxial cables, or in more recent systems, light pulses through fibre-optic cables. This contrasts with broa ...

show ''The

Leon Charney Leon Charney (July 23, 1938 – March 21, 2016) was an American real estate tycoon, attorney, author, philanthropist, political pundit, media personality and Jewish cantor. He lived in Manhattan in New York City, dividing his time between his ...

Report'', as well as minor parts in movies such as '' Eyewitness,

Raging Bull ''Raging Bull'' is a 1980 American biographical sports drama film directed by Martin Scorsese, produced by Robert Chartoff and Irwin Winkler and adapted by Paul Schrader and Mardik Martin from Jake LaMotta's 1970 memoir '' Raging Bull: M ...

'' and appearing in episodes of

SportsCentury ''SportsCentury'' is an ESPN biography television program that reviews the people and events that defined sports in North America throughout the 20th and 21st centuries. Using stock footage, on-camera interviews, and photographs of their athletic l ...

'' as an expert on sport figures including

Gordie Howe Gordon Howe (March 31, 1928 – June 10, 2016) was a Canadian professional ice hockey player. From 1946 to 1980, he played 26 seasons in the National Hockey League (NHL) and six seasons in the World Hockey Association (WHA); his first 25 seaso ...

Lawrence Taylor Lawrence Julius Taylor (born February 4, 1959), nicknamed "L.T.", is an American former professional football player who spent his entire career as an outside linebacker for the New York Giants ( 1981–1993) in the National Football League ( ...

and

WVOX-AM (2001 - 2009)

Following his departure from WEVD in 2001, Mazer launched an afternoon interview program on

WVOX WVOX (1460 AM) is a radio station licensed to New Rochelle, New York. The station is operated as a regional community station in suburban Westchester County, the Bronx, Queens, the North Shore of Nassau County, Fairfield County, Connecticut, ...

New Rochelle, New York New Rochelle (; older french: La Nouvelle-Rochelle) is a city in Westchester County, New York, United States, in the southeastern portion of the state. In 2020, the city had a population of 79,726, making it the seventh-largest in the state o ...

from 3–6 PM EST with his son, Arnie Mazer, serving as producer. His last show on

was aired August 3, 2009, ending his tenure at the station after nearly eight years.

Death (2013)

Mazer's death was reported on October 23, 2013 at the age of 92. He died at a hospital in

Danbury Danbury is a city in Fairfield County, Connecticut, United States, located approximately northeast of New York City. Danbury's population as of 2022 was 87,642. It is the seventh largest city in Connecticut. Danbury is nicknamed the "Hat City ...

Connecticut Connecticut () is the southernmost state in the New England region of the Northeastern United States. It is bordered by Rhode Island to the east, Massachusetts to the north, New York (state), New York to the west, and Long Island Sound to the ...

Bibliography

* Sports Trivia: ** ** ** ** ** **

External links

* with

on The Leon Charney Report

References

{{DEFAULTSORT:Mazer, Bill 1920 births 2013 deaths American Basketball Association announcers American information and reference writers American game show hosts American male journalists United States Army Air Forces personnel of World War II American radio sports announcers American television sports announcers Golf writers and broadcasters Major League Baseball broadcasters Milwaukee Braves announcers National Football League announcers National Hockey League broadcasters Jewish American sportspeople New York Giants announcers New York Knicks announcers New York Rangers announcers Television anchors from New York City People from Brooklyn University of Michigan alumni Soviet emigrants to the United States 21st-century American Jews