Forgive me a brief foray into inside baseball. But as I continually remind you folks, this Blob is my Blob.
And so a brief moment of silence, please, to mark the passing of sportswriting (I would simply say "writing") legend W.C. Heinz.
Heinz died in Montpelier, Vt., on Wednesday at 93, and if you never heard of him that's understandable, because he never wrote for the bulwark publications. He always seemed to have either the gift or curse for doing his best work for publications that were either obscure, failing or both.
That didn't mean he was any less a giant, however. Even in his own time, he was recognized by his peers as the best of a legendary lot. Lyric and exquisitely cadenced, what Heinz wrote was less sportswriting than literature-on-the-run.
Space and my own aversion to going on and on until I bore you all to death prohibits me from adding much more. But just as an example of Heinz's work, check out his feature on the death of hard-luck boxer Al "Bummy" Davis, "Brownsville Bum," anthologized in the 1999 release Best American Sportswriting of the 20th Century. It's widely regarded as perhaps the best sports feature ever written.
-- Ben Smith
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