Charley Hallman, a sportswriter for the St. Paul Pioneer Press for more than a quarter-century, has died.
Hallman, whose tenure with the newspaper spanned from 1970 to 1997, died of cancer Thursday at an assisted-living center in Hopkins, his former employer reported Saturday night. He was 71.
Along with spending much of his career covering the NHL's North Stars and the Minnesota Gophers hockey teams, Hallman routinely made it to Indiana to report on the Indy 500.
The Star Tribune's Patrick Reusse worked with Hallman at the St. Paul newspaper for 18 years and said Hallman was a "fantastically productive and dedicated newspaperman" who was a character without peer.
"He was the No. 1 character who I've worked with in 47 years of Twin Cities sportswriting, but there was more: He also could crank out more copy faster than anyone," Reusse said Saturday night.
Hallman joined the Pioneer Press on Feb. 1, 1970, from the Associated Press, and it was obvious that Hallman's time reporting for the wire service served him well on deadline.
"When Charley was on the road with Gophers hockey, to Houghton and Grand Forks and Duluth, the fastest way to get his game story back was with dictation," Reusse recalled.
"I would be on the copy desk on weekend nights, and … he would call in his game story, 16 to 18 paragraphs, without a pause, unless I asked for it — a totally coherent gamer completely off the top of his head."
