2025 BBWAA Career Excellence Award Winner Thomas Boswell

In more than half a century of crafting award-winning stories for the Washington Post, Tom Boswell covered every major sport in the United States. But it was baseball he loved the most.

Born in Washington, D.C., Boswell started at the Post in 1969 as a copy aide after earning a degree in English literature from Amherst College. He quickly transitioned into general assignment role before becoming the paper’s national baseball writer, covering his first World Series in 1975. He would be a fixture at every Fall Classic through 2019.

Moving to the Baltimore Orioles beat in 1980 and then to a columnist role in 1984, Boswell wrote eloquently about the National Pastime and its place in American culture. His books include “Game Day,” “The Heart of the Order,” “Why Time Begins on Opening Day” and “How Life Imitates the World Series.”

He pioneered a statistic called Total Average, one of the first attempts to quantify a player’s value beyond traditional metrics such as batting average.

Boswell was featured throughout Ken Burns’ seminal documentary “Baseball” in 1994, adding texture and context to analysis that went beyond the game on the field.

Boswell retired from the Post in 2021.