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Absolutely. It's the "most literary" of sports for the purposes of this article, but not really. There have been a lot of novels written which are either specifically about sport or where a sport plays a major part.

A few other contenders off the top of my head which have some literary pedigree:

Fishing - Old man and the sea

Hunting - Practically all the rest of Hemingway from what I remember although it's been a while

Grouse Shooting - Lady Chatterly's Lover

Tennis - Lots of David Foster Wallace, but in particular Infinite Jest[1] which is set in large part in an elite tennis academy

Basketball - The Crossover

American football - End Zone (the author of the OP loved Underworld, but DeLillo didn't only write about baseball)

Table Tennis - The mighty waltzer

[1] Which actually has a lot about punting in American Football also



You are missing soccer and Camus, who famously said "Everything I know about morality and the obligations of men, I owe it to football [soccer]."


Also Kapuściński's "Soccer War".


I haven't read any of his work, but wasn't Hemingway famously into bullfighting also?

I found this quote somewhere (haven't checked if it's real) “There are only three sports: bullfighting, motor racing, and mountaineering; all the rest are merely games.”




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