D.C. Sports Bog

Washington Post sports columnist Thomas Boswell to retire after 52-year career



Washington Post columnist Thomas Boswell, shown in 2015 at Nationals Park, working on a column and the last to leave the press box (John McDonnell/The Washington Post)

By Scott Allen
Reporter
May 7, 2021 at 9:22 a.m. EDT

Longtime Washington Post sports columnist Thomas Boswell announced his retirement Friday, ending a decorated 52-year career in which he chronicled the biggest moments in Washington and national sports with enthusiasm and erudition. He will continue to write and host his weekly online chat with readers until June 30.

[Thomas Boswell: After covering everything for 52 years, it’s time to see what I missed]

A D.C. native and graduate of St. Stephen’s/St. Agnes School, Boswell has spent decades in baseball clubhouses, NFL locker rooms, golf courses, boxing gyms, bowling alleys, pool halls and anywhere else the story of modern life could be told through competition. He covered 44 consecutive World Series, dozens of Masters and five Olympics. And he brought a fun-loving but insightful verve to columns about Washington’s sports triumphs and failings, from Super Bowl wins to college basketball championships, from hockey embarrassments to a Stanley Cup title, from the arrival of the Washington Nationals to their World Series victory and joyous parade.

“By the time I had parked near Union Station — I still know the parking tricks in my old neighborhood — and walked past the Department of Labor to a corner where every double-decker had to turn and the crowds (jammed at least 20-deep everywhere) could gather when a favorite player came into sight, I put my press credentials inside my sweater and said, ‘What the hell,’ ” he wrote then. “Being inside the ropes, in the media area, isn’t always what it’s cracked up to be. Sometimes being in the crowd — the huge, shoulder-to-shoulder, can’t-see-much-of-anything-but-here-we-are mob — is better.”

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By Scott Allen
Scott Allen has written about the Capitals, Nationals, Washington Football Team, Wizards and more for The Washington Post's D.C. Sports Bog since 2014. Twitter[/div