What A Time It Was [Paperback]

W.c. Heinz (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: April 10, 2001

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.

Editorial Reviews

From Publishers Weekly

"It's a funny thing about people," begins the first piece, about the death of boxer Bummy Davis, in What a Time It Was: The Best of W.C. Heinz on Sports, exemplifying the well-bred wiseguy tone of New Journalism's forerunner. In the 1950s, writes David Halberstam in his foreword, "[m]ost daily sportswriting was pedestrian, some of it too hyped up, some of it more like words served up as oatmeal." Heinz, also a fiction writer, changed all that and set the stage for the 1960s journalism revolution undertaken by Tom Wolfe, Jimmy Breslin and others. Whether in a profile of Vince Lombardi, a eulogy for a dead racehorse or an article about the shy and kindly former heavyweight champion Floyd Patterson, Heinz's writing is full of heart and gusto.

Copyright 2001 Cahners Business Information, Inc.

From Library Journal

In more than 60 years of writing for newspapers and magazines, Heinz has covered baseball, boxing, football, horse racing, and even bike races. But he has also written respected novels (The Professional), coauthored Vince Lombardi's Run to Daylight, and collaborated with H. Richard Hornberger to write the comic classic MASH under the joint pseudonym Richard Hooker. Drawing on both fiction and nonfiction written throughout his long and influential career, this new collection showcases his wide-ranging sports knowledge and enlightening narrative skill, whether the subject be the talented but accident-prone outfielder Pistol Pete Reiser or the original pound-for-pound fighting genius Sugar Ray Robinson. Heinz's anthology should be attractive to most public libraries and all sports collections. [Heinz had more entries than any other writer in the recent The Best American Sports Writing of the Century. Ed.] Morey Berger, St. Joseph's Hosp. Lib., Tucson, A.
- Morey Berger, St. Joseph's Hosp. Lib., Tucson, AZ
Copyright 2001 Reed Business Information, Inc.

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Product Details

• Paperback: 320 pages
• Publisher: Da Capo Press; First Edition edition (April 10, 2001)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0306810433
• ISBN-13: 978-0306810435
• Product Dimensions: 8.8 x 6 x 0.9 inches
• Shipping Weight: 1 pounds (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 4.7 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (3 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #1,055,640 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

4 of 4 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Long Overdue, November 11, 2001

By A Customer

This review is from: What A Time It Was (Paperback)

Okay, I'll be the first one to review this book: I'm surprised someone hasn't beat me to it. Here is where you can find one of the beginnings of the New Journalism, which flowered in the 1960s in the capable hands of Tom Wolfe, Gay Talese, Hunter Thompson, and so forth. In his magazine pieces and newspaper columns, Heinz inspired a later generation of writers with what is possible when you apply the literary conventions of fiction to reportage. As a prose stylist, no one is better. You can savor virtually ever sentence collected here. The book also paints a vivid portrait of an Old America, a different time in sports and culture, the America of my parents and grandparents. This is a nice volume to keep on the end table next to the couch to dip into whenever you're in the mood: the same is true of the newly reissued BOOK OF BOXING, an anthology that Heinz edited.

2 of 2 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars A Very Pleasant Surprize, August 30, 2003

By 

Randy Keehn (Williston, ND United States) - See all my reviews
(VINE VOICE)    (REAL NAME)   

This review is from: What A Time It Was (Paperback)

My father sent me this book when he was done reading it. I, frankly, had never heard of the author but I noted with interest that he was a sportswriter and had contributed to writing M*A*S*H*. I came across some of his stories in a different collection and discovered that this man can write. This book starts out with a number of profiles of different sports figures. Some are very famous (Red Grange, Stan Musial, and Sugar Ray Robinson) while others are very obscure (ever hear of Bummy Davis, Pete Reiser,or Jack Hurley?). Some of the profiles are heart-warming while others are heart-breaking; Heinz can handle either direction with skill. There is another section with selections from his works of fiction. This includes "The Red Raiders of the Imjin" which is where the football game in the movie M*A*S*H* comes from. The last section has a number of newpaper articles from over the years. The author's insights on boxing, baseball, football, and horse-racing shows that he really knows his stuff. He may not be a modern sportswriter but, from what I've read, he must have influenced a lot of the modern crowd. This was a very plesant surprize. Thanks Dad.

2 of 2 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars What A Writer, November 19, 2001

By 

Anthony John Kitchen (Hancock, MI) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: What A Time It Was (Paperback)

This is most possibly the greatest collection of writing ever. Bill Heinz is a pioneer who started the era of New Journalism (away with all the touchy-touchy writing). As a large fan of Hemingway, I must say that Bill Heinz puts Hemingway on the bottom of my bookshelf. His first novel, The Professional, is a masterpiece of sports fiction and was highly acclaimed by Mr. Hemingway himself. Even though Heinz never received the acclaim of Red Smith or Grantland Rice, Heinz deserves to be recognized as one of the greatest journalist's alive, if not ever. The collections of stories in this book, especially that of Pete Reiser, a Brooklyn baseball player that was robbed of a hall of fame career in center field because of injuries (and the outfield wall), are some of the most magnificent writing you will see in your lifetime. Containing the same prose style that Hemingway was made famous for, Heinz was praised by some of the greatest writers in his business. This book includes excerpts from his book MASH, as well as other fiction stories. Maybe it's the fiction style he brings to non-fiction writing, but whatever it is that makes Bill Heinze so great, I wish I could write like he does. Just like the people he covers, Heinz posses' a talent spectators could only dream for.

Also recommended: The Profesional; MASH