Controversies
He caused a controversy on September 15, 1944, when he reported that a Chicago newspaper had broken word of some sort of arrangement for the St. Louis Browns of baseball's American League to lose their only World Series that year. He later expressed regret about writing the article; the Browns did lose the World Series that year, 4 games to 2, to their hometown rivals whose park (Sportman's Park) they shared, the St. Louis Cardinals.
One day, while doing radio play-by-play for a football game, as a player broke away towards a long run for a touchdown, Stern misidentified the runner several times as he ran toward the goal. Noticing the error just before he crossed the goal line, Stern "corrected" himself by saying that the misidentified runner had lateraled the ball to the player who actually made the run and scored. Sometime later, Clem McCarthy, that era's most prominent horse-racing announcer, described the wrong horse as having won a race. When the verbose and egotistical Stern chided him for this error, McCarthy replied, "You can't lateral a horse, Bill."
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