W.C. Heinz
W.C. Heinz (b. January 11, 1915, in Mount Vernon, New York; d. February 27, 2008 in Bennington, Vermont); born Wilfred Charles Heinz, was an American sportswriter.
Following his graduation from Middlebury College in 1937, Heinz joined the staff of the New York Sun. After serving as the newspaper's war correspondent in Europe during the second world war, Heinz returned to the United States and was named the paper's sports editor. He wrote a popular column called "The Sport Scene," which covered boxing, baseball, football, and horse racing.
Heinz became a freelance writer after the Sun ceased publishing in 1950. He was a regular contributor to magazines such as SPORT magazine, Life, The Saturday Evening Post, Esquire, and Look.
He published his first book in 1958, a novel called The Professional, the story of a young fighter pursuing the middleweight boxing championship. Ernest Hemingway called the book "the only good novel I've ever read about a fighter and an excellent novel in its own right."
Heinz wrote more than a dozen books on sports, including Run to Daylight with football coach Vince Lombardi. He edited The Fireside Book of Boxing, an anthology of boxing stories. He also wrote several books about his wartime experiences. Most notable was his collaboration with Richard Hooker to write the novel M*A*S*H, which inspired an Academy Award nominated film and long running television series.
Heinz was a five-time winner of the E.P. Dutton Award for best magazine story of the year. He was inducted into the International Boxing Hall of Fame in 2004