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

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.

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

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.