Wilfred Charles Heinz (January 11, 1915 – February 27, 2008) was an American sportswriter, war correspondent, journalist, and author.
[2] One of his pieces from around this time – Death of a Racehorse, written July 29, 1949 – is famous for its brevity (fewer than 1,000 words) and its quality, having been compared to the Gettysburg Address[3] and the works of Ernest Hemingway.
He was a regular contributor to magazines such as SPORT, Life, The Saturday Evening Post, Esquire, True, Collier's, 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.
Heinz's additional books include Run to Daylight with football coach Vince Lombardi, The Surgeon, Emergency and Once They Heard the Cheers, in which the author travels the country revisiting sports heroes of his past.