I went to my first Rangers game at the age of 10 in 1942. The Blackhawks were in town and the rain was coming down in torrents. But my father decided that we would make the trip from our Williamsburg, Brooklyn, home, and so we landed in the ninth row of the side balcony at the old Madison Square Garden, which was located on Eighth Avenue between 49th and 50th Streets.
Since the old Garden was originally built for boxing, the side balcony literally overhung the ice, and that was no fun for many fans.
If you sat in any row beyond the second one, you couldn’t see the sideboards directly below or about five feet of ice along the boards.
But that didn’t curb my enthusiasm, and by the 1946-47 season, I had become a Rangers season ticket holder—only this time in the end balcony, which afforded a great view of the ice.
As a matter of fact, I still have an original stub of my MSG end balcony seat: October 30, 1949, Section 337, Row F, Seat 6. The ticket cost a dollar and a quarter.
And I loved every game of it.
But my real love affair with the Rangers didn’t begin until the 1952-53 season. By that time I was going to Brooklyn College and was looking to get a job in hockey somehow, anyway I could.
Luckily, the club’s publicist, Herb Goren, had just organized a Rangers Fan Club, which I eagerly joined.
The club actually became a springboard for my career. Along with RFC members Jerry Weiss and Fred Meier, I started the club newspaper, the Rangers Review. This gave us entree to interview players, the first of whom was Ed Kullman, who Freddie and I cross-examined in his suite at the Belvedere Hotel.
I worked hard for the fan club, and in 1954, after graduating from college, Goren recognized my potential and hired me as his assistant.
To this day—more than a half-century later—I can assure you that Herb’s phone call telling me I would be working for the Broadway Blueshirts was one of the greatest thrills of my life.
Although that 1954-55 edition of the Rangers didn’t make the playoffs, it provided me with enough experience to get a job as a full-time writer with the New York Journal-American, which was then the leading evening newspaper in New York.
At the time, Dave Anderson was the Rangers beat writer, but when he left for the New York Times in 1954, I moved onto the Rangers beat; and from that time on, my hockey-writing career took off.
Some sixty-one years later, I’m still intensely involved with The Game, and loving it as much as ever. Thus, it’s no surprise that I was tickled to receive the assignment for a book of this kind. My aim was to capture the great moments and players of the past while blending them with contemporary Rangers history.
One of the most significant aspects of the book is what I term the “Oral History.” This includes interviews that I had done over the years with Hall of Famers and other significant people involved with the hockey club. And naturally, I have featured profiles of players past and present.
To sum it up, I have attempted to present as total a picture of the Rangers, their personalities, and their environment—from Day One in 1926 to the present—as possible.
I hope you enjoy the result.
—STAN FISCHLER
June 2015, New York, NY