Steve Albert's book "A Funny Thing Happened On The Way To The Broadcast Booth" is filled with enough craziness that you have to wonder how he's managed to live to age 73 – and still look 43.
There's plenty of bizarre hockey stuff in it and, speaking of zany, I asked Steve if he'd ever heard of the Rangers' 1945 Eichler Automatic Goal Judge. (EAGJ) Of course I knew that he'd never figure it out.
Hey, NOBODY but The Maven knows that there ever was such a contraption; which is exactly what it was – a contraption that worked. This was artificial intelligence before Ai was a dream in some Martian's eye.
So, here's the deal: In the early and mid-1940's, Rangers games were broadcast on radio station WHN (1050 on the dial) which also carried Brooklyn Dodgers baseball. The Blueshirts' play-by-play guy was Bert Lee and his sidekick was Ward Wilson – two wonderful characters.
Among other things, Lee was a passionate Rangers fan and an international bridge – as in card game – champion. Wilson was a comedian (Radio Program "Can You Top This?"), master of ceremonies and featured on assorted WHN sports shows.
Their Rangers' sponsor for the 1945-46 season happened to be a then popular Big Apple beverage called Eichler Beer. Eichler's advertising slogan was "It's The Top" because of the attractive head of foam atop every brew.
And that's what inspired Lee's brainstorm – create something to tie in with "It's The Top" and there it was, right in front of him on Broadway. (Lee had just seen the Broadway hit, "Anything Goes" with its top tune, "You're The Top.")
Lee put two and two together and came out with five by getting studio techies to tie three little – but different – bike horns side by side so that when pressed the trio of sounds came out like "You're The Top."
After a successful test run at the WHN studio, EICHLER AUTOMATIC GOAL JUDGE was painted on the contraption's side and a second dress rehearsal told Lee and Wilson, "Madison Square Garden, here we come."
At the start of the 1945-46 season EAGJ was lugged to the mezzanine radio booth and now it was up to the Blueshirts to make it work. (Score a goal, already!)
"When the Rangers finally scored," Lee explained, "I said, 'And now for the Eichler Automatic Goal Judge.' Ward then pressed the three horns,, one after the other, and – sure enough – what came out was the first three sounds of 'You're The Top.'"
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At the start of the 1945-46 season the <a href="https://thehockeynews.com/nhl/new-york-rangers" target="_blank">Rangers</a> were a wreck.
Rangers fans loved it – Young Maven, included – and the Eichler Automatic Goal
Judge became an MSG staple throughout the season. (And who cared that it wasn't automatic nor ever to be accepted into the Goal Judges' union.)
To a young Rangers fan, the EAGJ was a wonderful invention, roughly equivalent to the light bulb and trolley car. But there was a problem that was no fault of Lee, Wilson, nor the Rangers.
In 1947 the John Eichler Brewing Company of The Bronx folded, and took The Eichler Automatic Goal Judge along with it to bankruptcy court.
Automatically!