Boswell's legacy to be honored with Career Excellence Award

Many writers have held the title of national baseball reporter for their publication over the years, but Thomas Boswell may be the most appropriate, covering the sport from the nation’s capital -- even when it didn’t have a team.

Boswell, who spent his entire 52-year career with The Washington Post -- and, in “retirement,” still writes a column a month -- will accept the Baseball Writers’ Association of America’s Career Excellence Award on July 26 during the Hall of Fame Awards Presentation at the Glimmerglass Festival’s Alice Busch Opera Theater on the shores of Otsego Lake. Also to be honored is Guardians broadcaster Tom Hamilton, the winner of the Ford C. Frick Award.

The BBWAA’s Career Excellence Award recognizes “meritorious contributions to baseball writing,” and Boswell is its 76th recipient.

Boswell, who was born in Washington, D.C., began his career as a copy aide in The Post’s sports department right out of Amherst College in 1969. He worked in the composing room, answered phones and covered high school sporting events.

“Covering high school sports was a really good experience,” Boswell recalled in an interview with the University of Maryland’s Shirley Povich Center for Sports Journalism. “It taught me you can really hurt people if you get the facts wrong or take a quote out of context. This is especially true for high school, because they aren’t making the money that the pros are, so the damage you can do as a reporter is much greater.”

In 1975, Boswell attended the World Series between the Reds and Red Sox as The Post’s national baseball writer -- at a time such a job description was new.

“In 1971, D.C. lost the Senators,” he said in the interview with the Povich Center. “Shortly thereafter, all the veteran baseball writers in D.C. either left or retired. By 1975, there was a vacuum for talent. I was sent to cover the 1975 World Series, in which Carlton Fisk hit that famous home run, as the ‘national baseball writer’ for The Post. No such thing had ever existed before, especially in a town without a team at the time. But that World Series really kept baseball’s presence alive in D.C.”

Five years after that World Series, Boswell became The Post’s Orioles beat reporter, covering the team through Cal Ripken Jr.’s debut in 1981 and their World Series championship in ’83.

“When I started covering the Orioles, I was about the same age as a lot of the players,” he told the Povich Center. “It taught me to keep my distance and to respect the people I was covering, and maintain a strictly professional relationship. Back then, there were fewer people around a team. If you asked sensible questions, players would talk to you.”

In 1984, Boswell was named a national sports columnist for The Post, holding that title until his retirement in 2021. He covered every World Series from ’75 until 2019 – capping the run, appropriately, the year the Washington Nationals won their first.

“I went down to the packed Nationals Park infield and just slowly looked around, a full 360. No revelations, just a memory,” he wrote in his farewell column in May 2021, recalling their National League Championship Series sweep of the Cardinals.

Boswell opted out of attending the 2020 Fall Classic played in Arlington, Texas, because of the risks of the COVID-19 pandemic at the age of 73. The Nationals’ title was a fitting capstone to his career, which began with the Washington Senators playing at RFK Stadium and included a 33-year gap without a Major League team in D.C.

“I’m somebody who grew up 15 blocks from the old Washington Senators ballpark at RFK Stadium in D.C. and rode my bike to cover games there,” Boswell told the Hall of Fame’s Bill Francis after being named the BBWAA’s honoree last December. “And it’s gone all the way from that to the last World Series game I covered before COVID, in 2019, when the Nats won their first World Series in 95 years. So, to say it’s a big circle with me happy and grinning in the middle of it would be an understatement.”

In addition to his work at the Post, Boswell wrote several books, including “How Life Imitates the World Series” (1982), “Why Time Begins on Opening Day” (1984) and “The Heart of the Order" (1989). He was also featured extensively in Ken Burns’ 1994 documentary, “Baseball.”