Baseball fans who grew up in Minnesota in the 1960s knew Halsey Hall as the color analyst on radio and television broadcasts for the Minnesota Twins. Hall was a masterful raconteur who wove tales of baseball from an earlier era into his patter. His career as an announcer and sportswriter went back well before the Twins came to Minnesota. He was a newspaperman first but later combined the career with other sidelines, including announcing, public speaking, and sports officiating.

Halsey Lewis Hall was born on 23 May 1898 in Greenwich Village to Smith B. and Mary Hall. Smith Hall had become a journalist at the instigation of his father and his great-uncle, who founded several daily newspapers in Minnesota, including the St. Paul Globe and the St. Paul Dispatch. He initially managed another of his uncle's papers, the Fergus Falls Telegram, before becoming assistant to the city editor of the...