So, every day Runner’s World sends me a quote.
A quote of the day, they call it. Today’s quote is
There is a ritual with any form of art.
– W.C. Heinz.
Why is a catsup magnate from two centuries ago being quoted about running, I wondered. I am a horseradish kind of guy myself. Turns out this guy was a great, great – really great – sports writer a century ago.
His first novel as described on Amazon… “Originally published in 1958, The Professional is the story of boxer Eddie Brown’s quest for the middleweight championship of the world. But it is so much more. W. C. Heinz not only serves up a realistic depiction of the circus-like atmosphere around boxing with its assorted hangers-on, crooked promoters, and jaded journalists, but he gives us two memorable characters in Eddie Brown and in Brown’s crusty trainer, Doc Carroll. They are at the heart of this poignant story as they bond together with their eye on the only prize that matters—the middleweight championship. The Professional is W. C. Heinz at the top of his game—the writer who covered the fights better than anyone else of his era, whose lean sentences, rough-and-ready dialogue, dry wit, and you-are-there style helped lay the foundation for the New Journalism of Jimmy Breslin, Gay Talese, and Tom Wolfe. And all the trademark qualities of W. C. Heinz are on ample display in this novel that Pete Hamill described as “one of the five best sports novels ever written.”
Ernest Hemingway, declared The Professional “the only good novel I’ve ever read about a fighter.”
So, I started thinking maybe I could learn something about fighting. Maybe something to help a writer, a runner, a poker player, a mother, a wife fight better.
My copy is in the mail.
Oh! Just found this: “If you’re going to read THE PROFESSIONAL written by the great sports writer W.C. Heinz, skip the foreward by Elmore Leonard until you’ve read the book. The ditz gives away the ending.”