How Life Imitates The World Series – Thomas Boswell, 1982 ★★★½

Dealing Out Poetry and Hard Slides

Baseball lends itself to two kinds of writing styles, lyrical and analytical. Thomas Boswell is a rare baseball writer who pulls off both with equal finesse.

Whether writing about stars or taking in the sport’s appeal to all ages, Boswell waxes poetic and, at times, sentimental about the communal power of the game, its power to simultaneously apotheosize and humanize its actors. But before those Ken Burns violins get going, Boswell throws in a zinger or one-liner to make clear he’s no sap.

The Heart Of The Order – Thomas Boswell, 1989 ★★

Baseball's Boswell at Less than His Best

It happens to nearly every sports columnist who becomes a public figure. The price of personality-centric journalism begins to infiltrate their copy until it is as much about the writer as it is the games being covered.

Thomas Boswell had been one of baseball’s most prominent scribes for twenty years when this book came out. His snarky, witty, probing style established him as a worthwhile voice for analyzing changes in the game, like free agency and the rise of the running game. Baseball characters like Pete Rose and Reggie Jackson made regular and welcome appearances in his columns, and got off good quotes.

By the time of the period covered in The Heart Of The Order, 1983 to 1988, baseball was beginning to move into a different space.