Profile of Zander Hollander

Nice profile of Zander Hollander, author of the Complete Handbooks, in The New York Times.

http://www.nytimes.com/2013/08/14/sports/for-true-sports-fans-before-the-internet-there-were-the-complete-handbooks.html

I remember fondly his "Amazing But True Sports Stories."

I see several mistaken references online to his death. Apparently confusion over a cousin of the same name who worked at UPI. Our Zander is alive, but not well.

 

Good story, thanks for posting. Annuals like his used to mark the official start of any sport's season.

 

Those books were bibles.
Prized purchases every year.

 

What a cool stroll down memory lane. Thanks, too, inthesuburbs for posting.

Pearlman's qoute in the story about "one-liners" is so true. One example was this opine on Granville Waiters: "How can a man so young look so old?" Those books had an edge uncommon at the time.

I was more into the NHL and NBA editions. Just the other day, I pulled the 1980-81 NHL book out curious about the Stastny brothers. Turns out their defection in August 1980 must have been after the book's deadline. No mention of Peter and Anton.

The Complete Handbooks were tremendous reading. Sorry to read Mr. Hollander is in such poor health.

 

I was born in 1973, but I had a copy of the 1972 Complete Handbook of Baseball my uncle had given me for years. Alas, it (along with many other old sports books) perished when my grandparents' shed flooded during Hurricane Katrina.

 

Poor Granville. Also written about him:
This guy never got off the bench in the playoffs. Bulls were eliminated. A connection? Be serious. He's slow, can't jump and is not aggressive. Was a free agent and the Bulls came to him last summer. "They said they needed me," he said. They never said for what.

I have my whole collection still in boxes in my parents' basement and I'll page through them on most trips back home. Big guys especially came in for thrashings.

Uwe Blab: They say he's a long-term project. At the rate he's progressing, he'll be ready to contribute in the league right about the time he qualifies for Social Security. A matching bookend of uselessness for the last two years with Bill Wennington on the bench.

Joe Barry Carroll: A prolific promulgator of polysyllabic palaver. In other words, he likes to use big words. Fancies himself as a real intellectual. It would be nicer if he just worked harder at playing basketball.

Artis Gilmore: Should hang it up before someone gets killed.

 

His book "The Happy Hooker" was a best seller back in the day.

 

Nice try, Boom. But that was a hell of a series in itself.
Especially for a kid who was just hitting his teenage years.