William Eugene Bryson Sr. (March 3, 1915 – January 31, 1986) was an American sportswriter who wrote for The Des Moines Register from 1937 until his retirement in 1978. He covered 32 consecutive World Series.

Early life
Bryson was born and raised in Winfield, Iowa.

Career
Bryson began his career as a reporter for the Winfield Beacon, his hometown newspaper.

Bryson Sr. has been called "one of the finest sportswriters in the country and widely recognized as such." As his son Bill describes in The Life and Times of the Thunderbolt Kid, due to the quality of Bryson Sr.'s work, one prominent television sports journalist thought of him as being "possibly the greatest baseball writer there ever was." He contributed to Baseball Digest and many other publications.

The Babe Didn't Point: And Other Stories About Iowans and Sports, a book of some of his best sports stories, was published by his son Michael.

Personal life and death
Bryson married Mary Agnes McGuire (1913-2015), an editor for The Des Moines Register. They had three children: Michael (who also became a sports journalist), Bill Jr. (who also became a journalist and a writer), and Mary Elizabeth. Bryson died of an apparent heart attack, on January 31, 1986, at his home in Des Moines, Iowa.

Bryson's son, Bill Jr., the renowned writer, published a loving tribute to his father in 2001 which described how Bryson had conducted what was probably  the very last interview with Babe Ruth, just a month before the legendary New York Yankee died in August 1948. The profile also includes the praise of Bryson noted above by a former NBC News president, who had said he "may have been the best baseball writer ever, anywhere."

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1915 births
1986 deaths
20th-century American non-fiction writers
American sportswriters
Baseball writers
People from Henry County, Iowa
Writers from Des Moines, Iowa