Hall of Fame broadcaster George Hale said he isn’t mad at anyone after being dismissed from the early morning radio show he’s hosted for years on WVOM.
“I’m not sitting here crying in my beer,” Hale said.
He said he knew the station had been hiring consultants and was making changes, so it didn’t come as a complete surprise to him.
“When you hire a consultant, and I’ve been involved in those things before, some guy out there who is supposed to be an expert monitors your station, you pay him a lot of money, and he tells you what to do,” Hale said. “Sometimes they’re right. A helluva lot of times they’re wrong. In this case, I think the jury is out.”
But the 94-year-old Hale, who has been involved in broadcasting for 77 years, said he never would have handled the situation the same way.
Bruce Biette, vice president and chief operating officer at Blueberry Broadcasting, called him while he was vacationing in Florida and told him over the phone that he was done, Hale said.
“In my career, over 70 years and some of it in management, I had to let people go. I had to make changes. But I never did it that way,” Hale said. “I brought them in the office, sat them down and said, ‘Look, we have to make a change.’ And, most times, they understood.”
Biette addressed the situation on the air Tuesday morning during the radio show.
“Simply put, George has had a magnificent media career,” Biette said. “He’s the reason a lot of us chose to get into this business, and we here at Blueberry Broadcasting appreciate everything he’s done for VOM.”
While Hale disagrees with how his firing was handled, he said he doesn’t harbor any ill will.
“I’m friends with all of them. There’s nobody at the station I’m angry with, and I’ve told the boss that,” Hale said. “I just don’t think they thought through what they did.”
There has been an outpouring of support for Hale.
“I’m humbled by it. I’m appreciative of it,” Hale said.
The supportive conversations included one with Maine Gov. Janet Mills, Hale said.
“I am not out here screaming and hollering and calling names,” Hale said. “I’m not doing that. I’ve never operated that way and I don’t intend to operate like that now.”
Hale, who grew up in Jacksonville, Florida, and New York City, has been inducted into three halls of fame: the Maine Broadcasting Hall, the Sports Legends Hall and the Maine Sports Hall of Fame.
He was the voice of UMaine football, men’s basketball and baseball for dozens of years and also broadcast high school games.
In addition, he served as the chairman of the Gambling Control Board and of the Maine Harness Race Commission.
He also called stock car races at Unity Raceway.
“I thought this afternoon when I was riding down the street: I’m 94 years old, I have not been unemployed in 77 years,” Hale said.
Hale’s list of memories is long.
They include several trips to the College World Series and the 1965 Tangerine Bowl football game between UMaine and East Carolina in Orlando.
He fondly recalled his enjoyable dealings with several UMaine head coaches and he pointed out that there was a time he used to ride the team buses.
“The coaches and players, to a large degree, treated you as part of the unit. I rode on the buses with them. They could talk to you,” Hale said. “You’d be on the bus and you’d hear things, and they knew you were not going to repeat them. “In fact, there were football games where I knew the game plan before the game.”
He said former UMaine football coach Harold Westerman “taught me as much as anybody about football. And I learned a lot from (former UMaine baseball coach John) Winkin.”
Hale recalled Westerman liked to run the Wing-T formation and the high school teams in the state emulated it.
Hale said UMaine has been fortunate to have had a “lot of great coaches” including some who have moved on to bigger venues. That included Kirk Ferentz, who has been the head coach at Iowa since 1999 after being at UMaine from 1990-92.
And Hale is convinced that former UMaine head football coach Walter Abbott would have made a very good line coach in the National Football League if he had decided to go that route.
Hale also recalled some opposing players like Julius Erving, the basketball great and Hall of Famer from UMass.
“I saw Dr. J slam dunk from about half court,” Hale said about the NBA legend.
He remembered the great baseball rivalry between UMaine and Miami fostered by New Jersey-raised head coaches and friends Winkin and Ron Fraser. The teams played on ESPN and Miami actually came to Orono to play.
Hale said he will always cherish his relationship with broadcast partner Al Hackett and with former UMaine sports information specialist Len Harlow.
But the landscape of college athletics has changed, he noted.
Schools can now pay their student-athletes directly and through Name, Image, Likeness deals. And student-athletes can transfer without having to sit out a year.
“It’s not the kind of sports world where you play for your school,” said Hale. “Amateur sports is dying rapidly.”
Hale isn’t sure about his future. He said he’s had a couple of people make “suggestions” to him about employment avenues and he discussed it with one person.
“I’ve got to watch my health here at my age. I’ve got a few things going on,” Hale said. “I’ll probably come down to Florida more often. I’m not going to move here, but my son has a place down here.”
And he already knows how he will be spending some of his time.
“I’ve missed a lot of family time because of covering sports,” Hale said. “I don’t have to miss that any more.”
