It is Saturday, October 4, 1924. The United States is in the midst of an election campaign: a month later Calvin Coolidge will enter his second term as President. But on this day the attention of the country is focused on Washington where the Senators of the American Baseball League will be hosts to the New York Giants of the National League in the opening game of the World Series.

Millions of baseball fans throughout the United States and Canada eagerly await the outcome. Will Walter Johnson, the fire-balling veteran of the Senators who has been with the same club for 18 years, turn back John McGraw’s talented club, led by future .400 hitter, Bill Terry?

Radio is still in its infancy. Most of those who follow the series will have to rely on their local newspapers — only a small number publish on the weekend — to learn what happened in Washington when Johnson faced the Giants’ Art Nehf.

But not in Halifax. There, outside the office of The Halifax Herald, corner of Argyle and Sackville Streets, a solidly packed crowd looks up to the second floor where a magnetic board, an American invention, will re-enact by means of a telegraph wire from Washington, the action taking part on the diamond in the Capital. A small steel ball skitters around the board. Expertly handled, it will present every detail of the game.

The man behind the board is a young Haligonian — Earl Morton.

It was the start of a sports career in newspaper and radio coverage of sports events, at home and away, that would continue for more than 60 years and, fittingly, is being climaxed by the election of Earl Morton to the Nova Scotia Sports Hall of Fame.

By 1927, Earl Morton was one of the bright young men in radio. He was delivering the first hockey play-by-play from the Halifax Forum. Not long afterwards, he took over from Major Bill Borrett at CHNS and handled, not only hockey, but baseball, yacht racing, harness racing and, indeed, any athletic event that demanded detailed and accurate coverage.

Microphone in hand, he travelled all over the Maritimes, yet found time to become an official of hockey and baseball governing bodies, notably the Maritime Amateur Hockey Association and the Halifax commercial Hockey League. He was associated with the Willow Parks and the Casinos of the Twilight Baseball League for many years. In hockey, he was to the fore in promoting local talent and under his leadership the famous old Crescents A.A.C. returned to the hockey scene. He was not just sports’ spectator. In baseball and in hockey, he was a stalwart with teams in the rugged, popular Commercial Leagues.

On radio, his great love, his voice was regularly heard throughout Canada on the sports review program sponsored by Imperial Oil and broadcast by the CBC. His fondest memories, however, will be of the old Halifax Forum. On December 30, 1977, he received a special award for his contribution to sports — “On the occasion of the 50th anniversary of the first broadcast of a hockey game from the Halifax Forum.”

Time has not dimmed his zest for every facet of the sports world. Sixty-one years after he joined The Halifax Herald Ltd., his by-line continues to appear, usually dealing with the great athletes of another day, in the columns of The Chronicle-Herald and The Mail-Star.

Bio Courtesy of Alex Nickerson