Hearne: The Unofficial Greg Hall Obit

Nobody was closer to Greg Hall in his glory years than I was…

When it came to writing about sports media and the like Greg was a gifted hothead (kinda like a stable genius). Which contributed to his multiple media breakups like at the Pitch – and including the one with KC Confidential several years back.

That said, return with me now to the early 1990’s when a sports talk radio-aholic who went by the handle Husker, began his unusual ascent into the annals of local pop culture history.

Let’s start with an excerpt from my December 2014 column about Greg…

“I heard Husker one time on – I believe – 1340 AM and and called host Denny Trease to track him down. Unbeknownst to most listeners, his real name was Greg Hall.

Greg was one of the youngest in a large family of Nebraskans and he’d relocated  to Kansas City. A die hard Cornhusker and Chiefs fan, Hall became a regular (call in personality) on KMBZ 980 AM,1340 AM and KCTE-AM, a new station former Channel 4 weekend TV sports nerd Kevin Kietzman had signed on with.

In other words, when it came to sports talk radio Hall was everywhere.

And a clever rascal he was…”

Greg had carved out a unique niche, that distinguished him on local sports talk radio.

“For some time now a sports talk junkie who goes by the name of ‘Husker‘ has been making the rounds of area stations doing variations on David Letterman‘s Top 10 theme,” I wrote in the Kansas City Star in late 1994. “His identity: Greg Hall , a free-lance ad creative writer. His latest effort: A schtick on Chiefs honcho Carl Peterson‘s booting of former Chief Nick Lowery from the sidelines during a recent game. It’s called the ‘Top 10 Reasons King Carl Kicked Nick Off of the Chiefs Sidelines.’ Some highlights: ‘Carl can’t stand seeing anyone but him in an expensive trench coat; Nick was reading a copy of The Kansas City Star; Carl’s last suit from Peter’s Clothiers shrunk. ” And the No. 1 reason: “There isn’t enough room on the sideline for both Nick’s and Carl’s hair. ”

Clever stuff, right?

Anyone remember KC councilman/mayoral wannabe Dan Cofran and his memorable mustache?

A couple weeks after tracking Greg down, I called upon him to do the “Top 10 reasons Dan Cofran had a family of Czechoslovakians waiting in line at 13th and Locust.”

The councilman had hired the Czechs to stand in line for three days in order to get his name first on the ballot for KC mayor.

Some highlights:

“The Czechs figured waiting in line would be less boring than watching the Chiefs game; Cofran’s family was unavailable because they were vacationing in Czechoslovakia; the Czechs were cheaper than hiring out-of-work Royals. And the No. 1 reason: You didn ‘t think Cofran was going to stand out there in the cold, didya?”

From that point on, I called on Greg and used  his clever Top 10 lists on a regular basis. Until a new columnist dude named Jason Whitlock showed up at the newspaper and adopted Hall as his daily sports muse.

Greg’s main specialty though was grabbing and making fun of out-of-context quotes from local sports personalities like Don Fortune, Kevin Kietzman and Frank Boal.

He’d been faxing those soundbites on a weekly basis to the sports desk at the Star – and clever as they were – the sports know-it-alls had complained to him about wasting their fax paper and asked him to stop.

That’s how clued out the newspaper’s sports experts were.

So I began feeding them to then editor Art Brisbane – who, like me, thought they were quite clever – and a year or so later, told the Star’s sports editor to hire Greg and give him a column.

Greg’s devilishly caustic columns took off and he became a pretty popular thorn in the side of  just about everybody in the local electronic media game.

So popular was Greg’s column that he was offered Danny Clinkscale‘s gig on the powerful KMBZ and at the same time, a far lesser gig on tiny WHB forbear, KCTE.

Unfortunately Greg chose the latter, and then was summarily fired in the station’s parking lot by general manager Chad Boeger for putting on a skit making fun of and implying Chiefs QB Len Dawson and broadcaster Bill Grigsby were gay.

A high tech guy for his age, Greg then started his website Sports Waves, on which he worked on day and night for several months. We’re talking the kind of hours that would make that blogger cat Tony look like Rip Van Winkle.

Greg was bound and determined to turn it into a money making venture – but good as it was content wise – he was unable to turn a buck so he shuttered it.

After that, he bounced from freelance gig to freelance gig with his soundbites columns – to the Pitch, Johnson County Sun and the Platte County Landmark.

Finally, after living largely on his wife’s income and doing freelance yard work and landscaping for his north of the river neighbors (Greg had an amazing green thumb), he decided to set aside his dream of becoming a successful sports media personality and got a real job. A career that allowed him to focus on being a better husband and great dad to his two young sons.

Enter KC Confidential after I succumbed to the massive layoffs of 2008/2009 at the Kansas City Star.

Greg agreed to come out of his media hibernation for the tidy sum of between $100 to $350 a month, resurrecting his popular media rabbit punches and trying to build KCC into a true moneymaker. Alas, that was not to be. And as most people – at least in sports media know – Greg was something of a hothead and when things didn’t go exactly as he wanted. So he decided to strike out on his own with another site.

Here’s his final, tongue-in-cheek contribution to KCC:

“The Top 10 Reasons Greg Hall Left KC Confidential

10. Glazer’s scandalous tales of juggling 20-something babes enticed Hall into trolling Westport. Haven’t seen that white boy since.

9. Hearne promised Hall a Fiat 500 but the delivery date turned out to be December 2015…in Rome.

8. The Kansas City Star called, “Hall?…Sorry, wrong number.”

7. The Kansas City Star called Hall back, “Would you like to purchase a subscription?”

6. Hall refused to take a job as a busboy at Jardine’s to augment his KCC income.

5. Simply no room for his OTC column anymore with all the flashing ads on KCC.

4. Hearne was making him click on Kelly Urich’s Starbeams column 100 times a day just to make Kelly feel good.

3. Hall was blackmailed into leaving KCC due to video that revealed his neck was the target of Mike Fannin at The Caddyshack Bar.

2. Nick Wright’s dad purchased KCC for $3.75 million just to get rid of that damn Greg Hall bastard.

1. Jason Whitlock was actually writing Hall’s stuff all these years.

I want to thank all my readers from KCConfidential over the past 2.5 years and let you know you can now read my (or Whitlock’s) OTC at my new website; http://greghallkc.com/ See you there.”

Again, Greg thought the world of his writing – which was clearly first rate – would translate into beaucoup bucks and he’d soon catch and surpass KCC  with 10,000 unique daily visitors.

It was a goal that was never to be…

Greg shuttered the site, blaming it on caustic comments – but truth be known – in my opinion it was all about the Benjamins.

Most of the comments on Greg’s site were like Hallmark cards compared to those here on KCC.

My final comment on Greg’s going away column read, “Greg’s a solid citizen – a dude who loves his family, his job, sports and his life – and one who will celebrate all of the above until he one day finds a way to share his special talent with locals again.”

All of that said, I don’t think anybody would have guessed Greg would suffer a heart attack and die at such the relatively early age of 65.

And aside from family and friends, Greg leaves behind a wealth of outlandish remarks…

Such as the time he fantasized in print about having – I believe it was – shower sex with Star readers rep Miriam Pepper. You shoulda seen the eyeballs roll in the newsroom at 18th and Grand.

Of course Greg was kidding, but you know how those left leaning journalists can be.

Not that he didn’t find her strangely attractive.

And I can personally attest to the fact that then Star sports scribe Jason Whitlock appropriated quite a bit of Greg’s work, publishing it under Whitlock’s byline.

Jason’s come a long way from those bygone days, but I could actually tell in a number of instances that it was Greg’s work.

For starters, Greg was Whitlock’s early muse – they spoke several times daily for well over a year before they had a falling out.

I also remember calling Greg out on it in one time, and his being a little bit out of sort. As I recall it was just before a big Chiefs playoff game, and Greg had emailed parts of a column he was planning on running in the newspaper. When a giant chunk of it showed up in Jason’s column, Greg was pissed.

When he called Big Sexy out, Greg said Whitlock half apologized and told him, “It was just too good.”

At that point, Greg told me that Whitlock had been paying him – and allow me to remind you – Greg was basically unemployed and in sore need of cash.

Unfortunately, Greg never made copies of the checks he said Whitlock paid him. So when he later called Jason out for plagiarism in the Platte County Landmark, he lacked the hard evidence.

Which allowed the thin skinned Star to send a cease and desist order to the Landmark, which publisher Ivan Foley says too this day that he completely ignored.

 

Another bit of Greg Hall trivia – which a number of sports media types likely recall – was that Greg was the author of referring to Kaufman Stadium as “The K.”

The Greg Hall who raised his wonderful family and who’s contributions to youth sports and marathon running, etc. was not the Greg Hall I knew. But in the scheme of things, he was an amazing man who’s contributions will long live on, beyond his premature end.