Thomas Boswell
Thomas Boswell
Thomas M. Boswellis an American sports columnist...
sports baseball player
Baseball has traditionally possessed a wonderful lack of seriousness. The game's best player, Babe Ruth, was a Rabelaisian fat man, and its most loved manager, Casey Stengel, spoke gibberish. In this lazy sport, only the pitcher pours sweat. Then he takes three days off.
sports baseball hockey
In and of itself, sports may be trivial, but as a symbol of the American way of life, it has enormous weight. We are seen, worldwide, as an enormously competitive, enthusiastic people who work as hard as we play and play as hard as we work. When baseball - which has traditionally canceled one day of games for huge national celebrations or disasters - stops play for six days, that has reverberations in the national consciousness.
summer sports baseball
Baseball is really two sports -- the summer game and the autumn game. One is the leisurely pastime of our national mythology. The other is not so gentle.
sports baseball illusion
More than any other American sport, baseball creates the magnetic, addictive illusion that it can almost be understood.
almost begins opening time
Time begins on Opening Day . . . (when) we know that something fine, almost wonderful, is about to (happen).
date fling june rather tacky tour wish
The PGA Tour will wish it had an entrenched June date here rather than a tacky fling with FedEx in Memphis.
golf major tournament watching
A Major golf tournament is 40,000 sadists watching 144 masochists.
against beat europe mixed scramble
If you can't beat Europe and you can't beat the Best-of-the-Rest, what's left? A mixed scramble against Tibet?
baseball art narrative-voice
A narrative voice with conviction is often hard to find. But not in baseball. The minors teach two lost American arts: how to chew tobacco and how to tell a story.
fun nice golf
Of the big four, the PGA is the most fair and the least fun. Basically, it's just the US Open set up by nice, rather than nasty, fellows.
golf majors tournaments
A major golf tournament is 40,000 sadists watching 144 masochists.
golf knowing mind
As every golfer knows, no one ever lost his mind over one shot. It is rather the gradual process of shot after shot watching your score go to tatters - knowing that you have found a different way to bogey each hole.
baseball distance player
The best place to catch a baseball hit by (Mark) McGwire is definitely not within the confines of the playing field, or sometimes even the ballpark. Other players dial '1' for long distance. McGwire has to ask for an international operator.
baseball often-is everyday
Baseball is to our everyday experience what poetry often is to common speech — a slightly elevated and concentrated form.