Everything They Had Read Free Page A

illustrated biographies and histories with photographs selected by my colleague and friend Richard Johnson. On several occasions we asked David to contribute an essay. He almost always agreed, asking only if he was being paid out of our own pockets or that of the publisher, and adjusting his fee accordingly.
    We worked together one last time in 1999, when my publisher decided to publish a collection entitled The Best Sports Writing of the Century . David Halberstam was my first and only suggestion to serve as guest editor. This time I was allowed to make the call, and again, the only question he asked was whether we would be working together or not.
    I cannot overstate how much that query meant to me, both personally and professionally. Once again he turned the editing of the book into a collaboration. Each time I sent him a bundle of material, I would soon receive a phone call from David wanting to discuss the stories. He seemed to know every writer and story already, and in conversations that were, in turn, sometimes funny and earthy but always profound, I felt as if I were the student at a private journalism seminar as he would deftly dissect a piece I liked that he did not, and, more often, show me why he liked the stories that he did. In one of those conversations, as we discussed the stories of W. C. Heinz, David openly wondered if Heinz was still living. I answered that I did not know, and over the next few minutes I could tell that David was intrigued by the possibility that he was—as I have already mentioned, Heinz had been an enormous influence on his career, but the two journalistic giants had never met or spoken.
    A few days later I received another call, and without even saying hello, David blurted out, “I just got off the phone with Bill Heinz,” and he proceeded to tell me all about it, speaking with the unbridled enthusiasm of a young boy who had just attended his first big league baseball game. His curiosity, combined with the selection of a few Heinz stories in the book, sparked something of a W. C. Heinz revival and introduced his work to an entirely new generation of writers, a true and lasting gift.
    It was during this time, as we spoke often and sometimes at length during the several months it took to put the book together, that I really began to comprehend the central role that sports—and sports writers—played in David Halberstam’s own personal biography. They were important to him and, to borrow a metaphor, he already knew the players without having to look at the scorecard. There truly was no one better equipped to serve as the captain of such a book than him.
    Later, after the book came out and he either referenced it in something he wrote or spoke of it in an interview, he nearly always mentioned that I did all the “heavy lifting,” an acknowledgment I cherished, for I knew that he was sincere. Like me, as a young man he had labored as a construction worker. Hard work was something he treasured and appreciated, and no writer I have ever encountered has matched his considerable work ethic. Yet as much as I appreciated the compliment, it also made me smile, because how could working with David Halberstam ever be considered “heavy lifting”?
    In the ensuing years before his passing we spoke only a few more times, primarily about another collaboration that never quite came together. The title of this book, in fact, stems from those conversations.
    We envisioned putting together a book we hoped our daughters would read, a collection of sports writing solely about female athletes. The working title we agreed upon was Everything She Had , a phrase that seemed to acknowledge a quality that David Halberstam admired not only in athletes, but in anyone who strove to succeed.
    When I was asked to recommend a title for this volume, I immediately suggested Everything They Had . I believe the title recognizes that not only did David Halberstam value those who gave