Zander Hollander (March 24, 1923 – April 11, 2014) was an American sportswriter, journalist, editor and archivist.
Many years before the internet and unfinished cable television system emerged, Hollander served as a prolific supplier of encyclopedias on every major sport. At this point, he edited, wrote or packaged around 300 books over a professional career that spanned 45 years.
Born as Alexander Hollander in
Brooklyn, New York
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 ...
, he grew up in
Far Rockaway, Queens
Far Rockaway is a neighborhood on the eastern part of the Rockaway peninsula in the New York City borough of Queens. It is the easternmost section of the Rockaways. The neighborhood extends from Beach 32nd Street east to the Nassau County line ...
. At age 14, he found his emerging sports ability writing columns for a neighborhood newspaper, and then in high school, he wrote for the ''
Long Island Daily Press
The ''Long Island Daily Press'' was a daily newspaper that was published in Jamaica, Queens. It was founded in 1821 as the ''Long Island Farmer''. The paper’s founder, Henry C. Sleight, was born in New York City in 1792, and raised in Sag Har ...
'' and the ''
New York World-Telegram
The ''New York World-Telegram'', later known as the ''New York World-Telegram and The Sun'', was a New York City newspaper from 1931 to 1966.
History
Founded by James Gordon Bennett Sr. as ''The Evening Telegram'' in 1867, the newspaper began ...
Hawaii
Hawaii ( ; haw, Hawaii or ) is a state in the Western United States, located in the Pacific Ocean about from the U.S. mainland. It is the only U.S. state outside North America, the only state that is an archipelago, and the only state ...
. After his discharge, he enrolled at City College of New York but did not graduate.
The heavy workload never really ended for Hollander. In 1955 he founded ''Associated Features'', a company which produced booklets that were distributed with assorted promotional products, but it was not a lucrative enterprise. Even when immersed in several editorial projects, he would occasionally take a freelance shift on the '' Daily News'' sports desk.
After a stint with ''
United Press International
United Press International (UPI) is an American international news agency whose newswires, photo, news film, and audio services provided news material to thousands of newspapers, magazines, radio and television stations for most of the 20t ...
'' as an editor in New York, Hollander was hired as a sportswriter by the '' World-Telegram'', originally to cover
yachting
Yachting is the use of recreational boats and ships called ''yachts'' for racing or cruising. Yachts are distinguished from working ships mainly by their leisure purpose. "Yacht" derives from the Dutch word '' jacht'' ("hunt"). With sailboats, ...
. Before he committed full-time to his company in the mid-1960s, his day might consist of visiting potential clients and writing on a freelance basis for magazines, followed by phone calls to
Western Union
The Western Union Company is an American multinational financial services company, headquartered in Denver, Colorado.
Founded in 1851 as the New York and Mississippi Valley Printing Telegraph Company in Rochester, New York, the company cha ...
so he could meet the ''World-Telegram'' midnight deadline. Besides this, he reported for the ''
Associated Press
The Associated Press (AP) is an American non-profit news agency headquartered in New York City. Founded in 1846, it operates as a cooperative, unincorporated association. It produces news reports that are distributed to its members, U.S. ne ...
'' about his stay in the
Soviet Union
The Soviet Union,. officially the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics. (USSR),. was a List of former transcontinental countries#Since 1700, transcontinental country that spanned much of Eurasia from 1922 to 1991. A flagship communist state, ...
.
Hollander decided to quit newspapers in 1966, when he rejected an offer to work as editor of the ''World-Telegram and Sun'', as it had become after merging with two other New York newspapers, the '' Herald Tribune'' and the '' Journal-American''. He then turned his attention to his ''Associated Features'' business in the years to come.
From 1971 through 1997, Hollander found a niche in the bookstores by annually providing career statistics and profiles of players, team rosters, all-time records, articles with photos, scouting reports, schedules and predictions for the upcoming season, in the form of brick-size tomes, 400-plus pages, he titled ''Complete Handbooks''. In them, he showed his experience and deep knowledge of professional
baseball
Baseball is a bat-and-ball sport played between two teams of nine players each, taking turns batting and fielding. The game occurs over the course of several plays, with each play generally beginning when a player on the fielding t ...
,
basketball
Basketball is a team sport in which two teams, most commonly of five players each, opposing one another on a rectangular court, compete with the primary objective of shooting a basketball (approximately in diameter) through the defender's h ...
,
American football
American football (referred to simply as football in the United States and Canada), also known as gridiron, is a team sport played by two teams of eleven players on a rectangular field with goalposts at each end. The offense, the team wi ...
,
hockey
Hockey is a term used to denote a family of various types of both summer and winter team sports which originated on either an outdoor field, sheet of ice, or dry floor such as in a gymnasium. While these sports vary in specific rules, numbers o ...
and
tennis
Tennis is a racket sport that is played either individually against a single opponent ( singles) or between two teams of two players each ( doubles). Each player uses a tennis racket that is strung with cord to strike a hollow rubber ball ...
, as well as
jai alai
Jai alai (: ) is a sport involving bouncing a ball off a walled-in space by accelerating it to high speeds with a hand-held wicker ''cesta''. It is a variation of Basque pelota. The term ''jai alai'', coined by Serafin Baroja in 1875, is also of ...
, soccer and college basketball and football.
But the aforementioned yearbooks of Hollander were just one part his multifaceted sports knowledge. He also chronicled sports bloopers and wrote a history of Madison Square Garden, among other subjects.
During his time as a journalist, he started a lifelong friendship with a then young lawyer,
Howard Cosell
Howard is an English-language given name originating from Old French Huard (or Houard) from a Germanic source similar to Old High German ''*Hugihard'' "heart-brave", or ''*Hoh-ward'', literally "high defender; chief guardian". It is also probabl ...
, who represented the
Little League
Little League Baseball and Softball (officially, Little League Baseball Inc) is a 501(c)(3) nonprofit organizationWABC to host a show featuring youth ballplayers. Hollander agreed to collaborate by writing scripts and recruiting sports celebrities for the show. They were not paid for their services, but it was the beginning of a successful sports broadcasting career for Cosell.IMDb.com – Howard Cosell : ''Telling It Like It Is'' (1999 Documentary) /ref>
In a 2001 interview, Hollander explained that as soon as he could hold a pencil and throw a ball, he dreamed of being a sportswriter. At the same time, he remembered that his first journalism effort was writing on a mimeographed newspaper in elementary school.
Hollander suffered from Alzheimer's disease during his later life. He died on April 11, 2014 in
Manhattan, New York
Manhattan (), known regionally as the City, is the most densely populated and geographically smallest of the five boroughs of New York City. The borough is also coextensive with New York County, one of the original counties of the U.S. state ...