And so, so many of us learned from him, most of the time in some combination of awe and admiration. On April 14, 2005, I sat next to Boz in the ramshackle press box at RFK Stadium for the first home game for a Washington major league team in 33 years — then sat, jaw agape, as a representative of the Hall of Fame asked him for his scorecard, Livan Hernandez’s effort into the ninth and Vinny Castilla’s near-cycle sent to Cooperstown through Boz’s chicken scratch. Later that summer, when it became apparent that the fences at RFK Stadium weren’t measured properly, it was Boz who encouraged me to buy a 300-foot tape measure, Boz who brought red ball caps to the yard one afternoon — so we would perhaps look like stadium workers rather than sportswriters — and Boz who devised a plan in which I stood at home plate, he walked out 300 feet toward center field, and I ran past him to measure the distance to the wall, the quickest way to work before we got caught and kicked out. Which we did — but not before we had enough data for a front-page story.

Source: Washington Post May 09, 2021 07:41 UTC