What A Time It Was: The Best of W. C. Heinz on Sports

by W.C. Heinz, David Halberstam (Foreword), Jeff MacGregor (Introduction)

Many think that W. C. Heinz stands right alongside the legendary New York Times columnist Red Smith as the greatest sports writer of the 1940s and '50s. Paving the way for the New Journalism of Gay Talese, Tom Wolfe, and Jimmy Breslin, Heinz was the first sports writer to make his living exclusively by writing for magazines. Whether describing mobbed-up boxers, crippled jockeys, lame horses, aspiring ballplayers, or driven football coaches, Heinz's finely etched, indelible portraits recall a sports era less influenced by money, image, and self-indulgence. He collaborated with Vince Lombardi on the book Run to Daylight, cowrote the novel M*A*S*H with Dr. H. Richard Hornberger under the pseudonym Richard Hooker, and wrote what Hemingway considered to be the "only good novel about a fighter I've ever read," The Professional. In this collection of Heinz's finest writing, we meet the immortal Red Grange; the injury-riddled, "purest baseball player" of his era, Pistol Pete Reiser; the greatest pound-for-pound fighter of all time, Sugar Ray Robinson; and the Brownsville Bum, Bummy Davis, in a story that Jimmy Breslin calls the "best magazine sports story of all time." Here is a long-overdue homage to a vastly underappreciated writer.

Genres: Baseball, Sports

303 pages, Paperback

First published March 31, 2001

Reviews

[K · Rating 3 out of 5]

If you like profiles of boxers from the 1930s-1950s, you will like this book. Otherwise, it has little appeal. I realize from the introduction that W.C. Heinz was an important figure in the evolution of sportswriting, and that's great. But the profiles are too long for my taste and all sound the same. And while Heinz himself says that he was a meticulously accurate note-taker, I find the sameness of the language a little suspicious. Either he is putting words into people's mouths, or he's picking words that fit his preconceived plan for the articles.

Another weirdness about the book is that the cover shows Jackie Robinson. But there is no profile of Robinson, nor any mention of him at all, as far as I remember. There isn't even an article about the famed Dodgers teams on which he was a star. The only substantial baseball piece is about Stan Musial, and it's not much. It's just about him getting dressed in the locker room before his final game and then getting two singles in that game.

The best part of the book is that it tells stories about boxers who led incredible lives, if the anecdotes are to believed. Not only were their fights vicious --- and they fought way more than fighters do these days, like 250 or 300 fights in their careers --- but they had big lives outside the ring. Given the timing of Heinz's career and his own service as a war correspondent who followed the D-Day invasion, he was drawn to boxers who also were in WWII or Korea. Those parts are very interesting and fill one with awe for their bravery and patriotism. (Contrast that with sports, business and political leaders today, especially Republicans.)

Heinz is drawn to down-and-out characters or the down-and-out aspects of those who reached the pinnacle of boxing. He's quite a disaster voyeur, in my opinion. I commend him for the endless hours he spent in the company of boxers, trainers, promoters, and so on. I'd be bored out of my mind hearing the same old stories, the whoppers and exaggerations, the cliches. Heinz spun that stuff into gold on some occasions, and congratulations are due.

[Gina · Rating 4 out of 5]

If nonfiction is what it says it is, then good nonfiction should appeal to me even if the subject doesn't. What better test for me than sports writing. So far, it holds up. Heinz had me at the first paragraph: "It's a funny thing about people. People will hate a guy all his life for what he is, but the minute he dies for it they make him out a hero and they go around saying that maybe he wasn't such a bad guy after all because he sure was willing to go the distance for whatever he believed or whatever he was." We'll see if I can make it through an entitre sports-writing anthology, kids.

Update: Well, it's going slowly, but I'm still enjoying it. The author died on Thursday, and reading up on him in the NYT gave me a renewed enthusiasm. He wrote MASH!

Final update: this gets a 4 and not a 5 only because of my own limitations with the subject matter. The essay "The Ghost of the Gridiron" is one of the most incredible personality profiles I have ever read, ever. Read it, fools!!!

[Dean · Rating 3 out of 5]

For admirers of great sports writing in the style of Frank deford, W.C. Heinz was doing it back in the late 40's through 60's. Also recommended for just plain great writing.

[David Kirkwood · Rating 4 out of 5]

This book is worth buying for the piece on Bummy Davis alone, the rest is pure gravy. What can I say, just great writing by a great writer.

[Pete · Rating 5 out of 5]

this book gets five stars even if it stopped after the first paragraph of "brownsville bum." that is a biological fact.

[Thomas Griesedieck · Rating 4 out of 5]

"Death of a Racehorse is astonishingly great."