The Top of His Game: The Best Sportswriting of W. C. Heinz

W. C. Heinz (1915-2008), a war correspondent during World War II,  wrote a daily sports column for the New York Sun and later, as a freelance writer, sports profiles and articles, mostly about boxers, for Collier’s, The Saturday Evening Post, Cosmopolitan, Look, Life, and other magazines. He was the author of the novels The Professional, The Surgeon, Emergency, and, under the pseudonym “Richard Hooker,” M*A*S*H (with Korean vet Richard Hornberger.) He also wrote Run to Daylight!, a bestselling as-told-to memoir by Packers coach Vince Lombardi, and, Once They Heard the Cheers, a book of twenty profiles of the sports greats of his youth. 

Bill Littlefield has hosted National Public Radio’s weekly sports magazine, “Only A Game,” since 1993 and has written commentaries for NPR and Boston’s WBUR-FM for over thirty years. He is the author of seven books, including the novels Prospect and The Circus in the Woods and the recent collection of sports verse Take Me Out. In 2001 he met W. C. Heinz and they became friends, for which he has been grateful ever since.

W. C. Heinz (1915-2008), a war correspondent during World War II,  wrote a daily sports column for the New York Sun and later, as a freelance writer, sports profiles and articles, mostly about boxers, for Collier’s, The Saturday Evening Post, Cosmopolitan, Look, Life, and other magazines. He was the author of the novels The Professional, The Surgeon, Emergency, and, under the pseudonym “Richard Hooker,” M*A*S*H (with Korean vet Richard Hornberger.) He also wrote Run to Daylight!, a bestselling as-told-to memoir by Packers coach Vince Lombardi, and, Once They Heard the Cheers, a book of twenty profiles of the sports greats of his youth. 

Bill Littlefield has hosted National Public Radio’s weekly sports magazine, “Only A Game,” since 1993 and has written commentaries for NPR and Boston’s WBUR-FM for over thirty years. He is the author of seven books, including the novels Prospect and The Circus in the Woods and the recent collection of sports verse Take Me Out. In 2001 he met W. C. Heinz and they became friends, for which he has been grateful ever since.