Hall, Halsey 1898-1977

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HALL, Halsey 1898-1977

PERSONAL: Born May 23, 1898, in New York, NY; died December 30, 1977; son of Smith B. (a journalist) and Mary deLuce (an actress; maiden name, White) Hall; married Marguerite Sula Bornman, December 22, 1922; children: Susan.

CAREER: Sportswriter and announcer. Provident Life and Trust Co., Minneapolis, MN, stenographer; Minneapolis Tribune, Minneapolis, sportswriter, 1919-22; St. Paul Pioneer Press, St. Paul, MN, sportswriter, 1922-26; Minneapolis Journal (became Minneapolis Star-Journal, 1939, Minneapolis Star, 1941), sportswriter, 1926-60; Minnesota Twins (baseball franchise), broadcaster, 1960-77; Twin Cities Free Press, Minneapolis, sportswriter, 1977. Member of Baseball Scoring Rules Committee. Military service: U.S. Navy, 1918-19, served as a recruiting officer.

MEMBER: American Association of Baseball Writers (president, 1934).

WRITINGS:

Work represented in the Best Sports Stories, edited by Irving T. Marsh and Edward Ehre, Dutton (New York, NY), 1947; contributor to periodicals, including Minneapolis Daily American, Sporting News, and several locally published magazines. Columns included "Here's How" and "It's a Fact."

SIDELIGHTS: Halsey Hall was born in Greenwich Village in New York City, of a journalist father and actress mother. The couple returned to their home in Minnesota soon after Hall's birth and divorced when he was six. Hall was raised by his father's extended family, in particular his grandmother, Corinne Hall. At one point, he was under the care of a nanny who held him over the gas stove to make him sleepy, a practice that led to the development of rickets and spindly legs. According to Hall's daughter, Sue Kennedy, he did not speak until he was four. Hall's father, who traveled extensively, spent as much time with his son as was possible, often taking him to vaudeville shows at theaters he served as a publicity agent. He sometimes let the young boy write the review of the show, which would then appear the next morning in the Minneapolis Tribune.

While in high school, Hall earned a letter in track and field and was a conscientious student, taking summer courses in typing and bookkeeping while still in high school. He served with the U.S. Navy as a recruiter and took his first reporting position upon returning to civilian life. He began by covering high school games and went on to report on all types of sports for fans in Minneapolis and St. Paul for more than forty years at several different newspapers. He wrote about college games, and professional hockey and baseball. His account of the October 9, 1929 game between the Chicago Cubs and the Philadelphia Athletics was included in a journal published annually in recognition of the year's top sports reporting by the New York Herald Tribune. His articles were also included in five editions of the yearly "best of" published by Dutton, beginning with Best Sports Stories 1947: A Panorama of the 1946 Sports Year.

In 1932 Hall covered two World Series simultaneously, the one between the New York Yankees and the Chicago Cubs, and the Junior World Series matchup between the Minneapolis Millers (American Association) and Newark Bears (International League). Hall managed this sportswriting feat by shuttling back and forth between Bears Stadium in Newark, New Jersey and Yankee Stadium in the Bronx. The Yankees won their series, led by Babe Ruth and Lou Gehrig, but Hall's hometown team lost theirs, in part because of a controversial ruling in the third game. Many blamed the loss on an umpire's call, but Hall graciously praised the winners instead. It was his high standard of reporting that made Hall a beloved figure in the upper Midwest.

Hall wrote his two longest-running columns, "Here's How" and "It's a Fact" for a number of newspapers. Stew Thornley wrote in Dictionary of Literary Biography that "the observations he made in his column were sometimes sarcastic and biting, often humorous, and, on occasion, poetic." Hall often did double duty as a photographer. The newspapers for which He worked merged and changed names several times, and eventually his columns were carried by both the Minneapolis Star, his employer, and the Minneapolis Tribune, a sister paper. He was one of the first to report on and praise the new center fielder for the Minneapolis Millers, a young Willie Mays, who left Minnesota less than a month into the regular season to play for the New York Giants, owner of the Millers. As Hall covered the Millers over the years at Nicollet Park, he watched other players advance east to New York.

"Hall was never one to turn his back on innovation," wrote Thornley. During a strike by Western Union operators, Hall carried a crated carrier pigeon belonging to Angelo Giuliani, a St. Paul major league pitcher, to Kansas City, where he was covering a game. Hall put his story in the capsule attached to the bird's leg, set it free, and made his deadline.

While Hall was writing for newspapers, he was also pursuing another career in announcing. His first event was the heavyweight title between Jack Dempsey and Montana native Tommy Gibbons, held in Shelby, Montana. But he did it from St. Paul, recreating the fight from a telegram and announcing it through a megaphone to the fans on the street below his open window in the Pioneer Press building. He went on to announce in a more conventional way, and his voice soon became familiar to his radio fans. Hall acted as a referee for local high school and college football and basketball games, and also officiated at National Football League games when Minneapolis had a team in the 1920s. In 1960, Hall narrowed his jobs down to one, as announcer for the Minnesota Twins baseball team, but he continued to write occasional articles for various publications until his death in 1977.