At the age of seven — year 1939 to be exact — my father Ben Fischler took me to a hockey game at (old) Madison Square Garden on Eighth Avenue between West 49th and West 50th Streets, just off Times Square in Manhattan.
Dad didn’t mean it to be anything special nor did I. But the sight of players rushing up and down the ice electrified me. So did the well-padded goaltenders and the rugged body checks. On the subway ride back to our home in Williamsburg, Brooklyn, I asked Ben Fischler if he’d mind taking me back to The Garden for another hockey game.
Dad didn’t mind and so this only child never stopped going to hockey games after that. Who knew? Molly and Ben Fischler must have at least sensed that something was up; between Stanley and hockey.
At age ten — in 1942 — on my tenth birthday they gifted me with a tiny Philco “Transitone” radio and a big scrapbook with an Indian head on the cover. The little Philco allowed me to listen to hockey games from as far away as Toronto and the scrapbook was my repository for endless hockey clippings.
A month before graduating Eastern District High School in Brooklyn, our yearbook editor asked each graduate to list his and her ambition in life. I was the only one not to fill in the blank. What I wanted to write was something like “Hockey Writer.” But it seemed so impossible that I chose not to embarrass myself so I wrote nothing.
But things began happening once I entered Brooklyn College. I realized I could write and I also began making contacts at Madison Square Garden as vice-president of the Rangers Fan Club. One of those contacts was Tom Lockhart, the Rangers business manager who also ran the Blueshirts farm team, the New York Rovers. With all necessary chutzpuh, I asked Lockhart one day if he’d allow me to write a weekly newsletter for the Eastern Amateur Hockey League in which the Rovers played; and he agreed.
That proved to be my stepping stone into the worlds of journalism and hockey. In 1954 — the year I graduated from Brooklyn College, I was offered a full-time job as assistant publicist for the New York Rangers.
Mind you, all this time, from my first visit to shul as a little kid and through my bar mitzvah in 1945, I was acutely aware of and proud of my Jewishness. This feeling remained into my professional life. During my Rangers stewardship (1954-55) I was invited to join the “Sports Lodge” of B’nai Brith and met many sporting colleagues including Max Kase who was sports editor of Hearst’s New York Journal-American newspaper.
Max launched my journalistic career bigtime by assigning me to write daily columns and from there my contacts expanded. A Jewish colleague, Harold Harris, wrote a political column a the J-A and he further broadened my horizons by having me inducted into the Inner Circle, an exclusive political reporters club. (By that time I was covering City Hall for the J-A.)
As my career expanded into the world of book-writing, I inevitably leaned on Jewish pals for advice. One of them — Jack Zanger of Sport magazine — hooked me up with my first of 100 book-writing gigs and so it went.
Throughout my lengthy career — I’m now 93 and still writing — I never left the world of hockey nor the world of Jewry. Among my honors were eight Emmy (tv) awards, induction into the U.S.A. Hockey Hall of Fame, the New York State Hockey Hall of Fame and winner of the Lester Patrick Award “for service to hockey in the United States.”
Although I made a point of not thinking too much about awards — or Halls of Fame for that matter — I somehow sensed that something was missing; and there was. When I learned that I was being welcomed into the International Jewish Sports Hall of Fame, I knew that the full circle that began at the first hockey game with my Dad at old Madison Square Garden had been complete.
My love of sports, of journalism, and of my Jewishness never has abated; stronger, in fact, now more than ever where I live in Israel. Which is a very round about way of telling you all at the International Jewish Sports Hall of Fame todah-rabah.
Thank you very much. I am honored and — more than ever — proud to be a Jew!
