Ringgold Wilmer "Ring" Lardner (American: 1885-1933) was primarily a sports columnist, but deserves inclusion here for his only novel, You Know Me Al (1916), and a number of short stories, some (but not all) of which had sports as a theme. You Know Me Al is highly recommended for those interested in Satire and Black Comedy, and a straightforward writing style reminiscent of, well, sports columns for example. It's probably the first critical analysis of the hero worship and myth-making which is today considered inseparable from the sports world. Virginia Woolf, F. Scott Fitzgerald, and Ernest Hemingway were among Lardner's many admirers, so he must have been doing something right. S. J. Perelman admitted that Lardner should have had him arrested for stealing from his work.