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

What a Time It Was collects the greatest sports writing of W.C. Heinz, one of America's pioneering sportswriters from the 1940s and 1950s. The book features Heinz's coverage of boxing, baseball, football, and horse racing for publications like The Sun and other major newspapers. The stories include profiles of athletes like Rocky Graziano and Red Grange, alongside accounts of historic sporting moments and behind-the-scenes glimpses of training camps and locker rooms. Heinz's reporting style emphasizes the human elements of sports, focusing on characters and motivations rather than just scores and statistics. The collection preserves an important era in both sports and journalism history, capturing the period when sportswriting began evolving from basic game recaps into a more literary form. These pieces demonstrate how sports narratives can reflect broader themes of ambition, struggle, and the pursuit of excellence.

Sports fans and journalists applaud W.C. Heinz's writing style, noting his ability to capture human emotions in his sports profiles and stories. Multiple reviewers highlight his piece "Death of a Racehorse" as exemplifying his talent for making readers feel present at the events he describes. Readers liked: - Clean, precise prose with no wasted words - Focus on character details over game statistics - Behind-the-scenes stories that reveal athletes' personalities Criticisms: - Some pieces show their age with dated cultural references - Selected stories can feel disjointed when read together - Boxing-heavy focus may not appeal to all sports fans Ratings: Goodreads: 4.1/5 (14 ratings) Amazon: 4.4/5 (11 reviews) "His ability to set a scene and draw out subtle details makes even decades-old stories feel immediate," noted one Amazon reviewer. Another called it "a master class in sports journalism from one of the pioneers of the form."

The Sweet Science by A.J. Liebling This collection of boxing essays from the 1950s New Yorker combines reporting from ringside with profiles of fighters and the culture of prize fighting.

The Best American Sports Writing of the Century by David Halberstam and Glenn Stout This anthology spans 100 years of sports journalism from writers who captured defining moments in sports history through personal narratives and in-depth reporting.

Summer of '49 by David Halberstam The chronicle tracks the pennant race between the New York Yankees and Boston Red Sox through intimate portraits of players and detailed game accounts.

The Boys of Summer by Roger Kahn This memoir follows the Brooklyn Dodgers of the 1950s both during their playing days and decades later as their lives unfolded after baseball.

Only the Ball Was White by Robert W. Peterson This history of the Negro Leagues presents the stories of players, teams, and games through firsthand accounts and detailed research of an overlooked era in baseball.

🏆 W.C. Heinz revolutionized sports journalism by pioneering a narrative, literary style that influenced later writers like Gay Talese and David Halberstam. 📝 Before focusing on sports writing, Heinz was a war correspondent during World War II and was one of the first reporters to witness the D-Day invasion. 🥊 His article "The Day of the Fight," about boxer Rocky Graziano, is considered one of the greatest pieces of sports journalism ever written and inspired Ernest Hemingway to send Heinz a congratulatory note. 📚 Besides his sports writing, Heinz co-wrote M*A*S*H under the pen name Richard Hooker, which became both a successful film and one of television's most popular series. ✍️ Heinz developed his distinctive writing style by carrying a notebook everywhere and meticulously recording dialogue and details, believing that accuracy and authenticity were crucial to good storytelling.