Bronx Banter: Belth: All Pros

The All Pros being...W.C. Heinz and Myron Cope.

Two wonderful writers died yesterday, W.C. Heinz, 93, and Myron Cope, 79. Both had been sick for some time. Heinz, whose reputation as a pioneer of creative non-fiction has been championed over the past decade, may have been the more accomplished writer of the two, but Cope, who is most famous as the radio voice of the Pittsburgh Steelers, was a terrific takeout writer in his time (1950s and 60s) as well.

How big a deal was Heinz? The late David Halberstam was one of his greatest supporters. In the introduction to The Best American Sports Writing, 1991, Halberstam wrote:

“When I think of the early influences on me and many of my contemporaries, I think of men like [Red] Smith, [Jimmy] Cannon and [W.C.] Heinz. They were the writers who we as young boys turned to every day, and they were the ones experimenting with form . . . When I think of the pioneers of New Journalism, I think first of the trinity of my early heroes: Red Smith, Jimmy Cannon and Bill Heinz.”

Glenn Stout, who is the series editor of the Best American Sports books, wrote in an e-mail yesterday: “If I track back my career as a writer, part of it starts when I first read Langston Hughes, and part of it starts when I first read Jack Kerouac, and part of it starts when I first read Heinz in the old Best Sports Stories anthology and realized that sports writing could be literature, too.”

Allen Barra, also via e-mail, added: “He was The Great American Sportswriter. He never wrote in false hyperboles, never tried to be bigger than his subject. He’ll be read when people have stopped watching ESPN.”