The Top of His Game: The Best Sportswriting of W. C. Heinz
by: Heinz, W. C. (Ed. Bill Littlefield)

Hardcover. NY, Library of America, 1st, 2015, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: Very Good, Hardcover in a bright dust jacket, 594 pages. W. C. Heinz (1915-2008) was one of the most distinctive and influential sportswriters of the last century. Though he began his career as a newspaper reporter, Heinz soon moved beyond the confines of the daily column, turning freelance and becoming the first sportwriter to make his living writing for magazines. In doing so he effectively invented the long-form sports story, perfecting a style that paved the way for the New Journalism of the 1960s. His profiles of the top athletes of his day still feel remarkably current, written with a freshness of perception, a gift for characterization, and a finely tuned ear for dialogue. Jimmy Breslin named Heinz's 'Brownsville Bum"a brief life of Al 'Bummy" Davis, Brooklyn street tough and onetime welterweight champion of the world'the greatest magazine sports story I've ever read, bar none." His spare and powerful 1949 column, 'Death of a Race Horse," has been called a literary classic, a work of clarity and precision comparable to Hemingway at his best. Remainder dot to bottom edge otherwise clean.