Bill Bryson Sr.

William Eugene "Bill" Bryson Sr. (March 3, 1915 – January 1986) was a sports journalist for the Des Moines Register for 50 years. He married Agnes Mary McGuire (born 1913 in Nebraska, died 2015) and had three children: Michael, William, and Mary Elizabeth. A book of some of his best sports stories was published by his son Michael called The Babe Didn't Point: And Other Stories About Iowans and Sports. His son Bill Bryson is a popular journalist and writer of travel books, who now lives in England.

According to Bryson Jr.'s book, The Life and Times of the Thunderbolt Kid, Bryson Sr. was a baseball writer of some renown. The book also writes of the extreme competence of Bryson Sr.'s baseball writing, noting how 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.