RIP Amazing Mazur

No love? Nobody in the NY area watched sports extra? RIP.

 

I watched and listened to him on the radio. He made sports trivia fun and made it matter.

Sports Extra was an exceptionally well done program. Lee Leonard, who was on NBC Grandstand and the first person to speak on ESPN, was with Mazur and Jerry Izenberg, who was an outstanding columnist, also did features. I think it was on Channel 5 for 30 minutes on Sunday night. The would talk about all of the New York teams, do some commentary, some comic bits, and they would close the show with songs which related to a story they did.

Within the past two weeks, I read somewhere that Sports Extra was a pioneering show to have a sports news program stand alone in a regular time slot. I don't know if that is true because sometimes things get done outside of a major market and they aren't noticed. It was a great show in the days before we had all-sports networks.

 

Somewhere I have a sports trivia book of his I got when I was a kid. I had no idea who he was, but, hey, he got me to buy his book since I loved sports.

 

Sports Extra on Sunday Nights at 10:30 was a must watch. The
original Sports Center. Also a pioneer in sports talk radio.

Back in the day I once waited on hold for about 2 hours to
get on his radio show to talk to Mazur and his guest Red Holtzman.

It was around 1971 and I asked Red how he would
defend the new Supersonics front line of Spencer Haywood, Jim
McDaniels and John Brisker. I remember Red saying that
it was purely hypothetical but he would put Reed on McDaniels ,
Bradley on Brisker and Debusshere on Haywood.

Mazur really was a NY Sports Icon. RIP

 

I remember him on WGR TV in Buffalo before he moved to NYC in the early 1960s. RIP.

 

It's Mazer, not Mazur. (Sorry, I had to.)

I was a faithful watcher of Sports Extra. I met him when one of my friends was on his radio show that broadcast from Mickey Mantle's. Nice man. RIP.

 

Hosted a game show on NBC called Reach for the Stars in the late 1960s as well. Short-lived, but a lot of sportscasters did games back then (seemed like a natural fit)...

 

I remember that. I guess it was a think where those guys were in the Rockefeller Center building, so they used them for game shows.