Thomas Boswell

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Thomas Boswell (born 1948) is a sports columnist for the Washington Post. He is the author of several best-selling books, most of which are collections of his Post columns and other previously published works. While he writes about a variety of sports, he is primarily associated with baseball.

He is known for a literary, poetic approach to writing about the game. The late Shirley Povich once called him "a student and unmatched chronicler-philosopher" of baseball. And the New York Times Book Review described him as a writer who "insists that baseball isn't just a game played by a lot of big kids in their pajamas but rather something dignified and even transcendent, a sort of living allegory."

1 Career
2 Books
3 Awards
4 External link

[edit] Career

A Washington, D.C. native, Boswell started working at the Post shortly after getting an English literature degree from Amherst College in 1969. After stints as a copy aide and a general assignment sports reporter, he became a columnist in 1984.

Boswell grew up a fan of the Washington Senators, but because the team left the city after the 1971 season, he became known for his writing about Washington's adopted hometown team, the Baltimore Orioles. That changed somewhat in 2005, when the Montreal Expos moved to D.C. and became the Washington Nationals. Since that time, the Nationals have become a frequent topic of Boswell's writing.

Perhaps his best-known work is a 1987 essay he wrote for the Washington Post Magazine, "Why Is Baseball So Much Better Than Football? Let Me Count the Ways."(The essay was renamed "99 Reasons Why Baseball is Better Than Football" when it appeared in Boswell's book, The Heart of the Order).

Boswell is credited with inventing the statistic known as total average.

In addition to his Post work, he has written for such publications as Esquire magazine, GQ, Playboy and Inside Sports. He also makes frequent television appearances, inlcluding contributions to Ken Burns' 1994 PBS documentary, Baseball.