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Plot Summary
This is the true story of how underpaid men in competitive sports can be sucked into corruption by the sharks lurking at the edges of the ballfield. In 1919 eight members of the Chicago White Sox were lured into throwing the World Series against the Cincinnati Reds with the promise of cash from professional gamblers. They were, or most of them were, inherently honest and not sophisticated enough to buck organized crime. Their devotion to the game and to winning that had driven the team to the top of the game sabotaged the commitment to lose, as did the badgering of teammates not in on the scam. But there were, as always, consequences.
While the gamblers scheme in the film, and everyone is out to get everyone else both good guys and bad guys learn that their perceived power is indeed little more than perception. And nobody apparently counted on bad guys with guns. While we watch the often silly, and very similar machinations of people trying to make a buck they have not earned, and take some more from someone else, a sportswriter and his crony, representing real-life Ring Lardner and Hughie Fullerton, notice the breaks in old patterns of playing and the new patterns of cheating. Their paper prints stories about what they believe is happening and why.
Baseball has to react. Someone must pay, so the owner hires a hotshot lawyer, who, predictably, wants not only his pound of flesh, but a lifetime of retainers. There is a trial, the players are found innocent of charges that would have sent them to jail, but none of them will ever play again. Even the one who did not actually cheat.
All of this happens in dim light, except on the ballfield, in sepia tones, so it is often vague who is shuffling those piles of hundred dollar bills across the bed, and who is leading whom. The murky cinematography is very effective. There seems to be a strong moral stain to it that splashes everyone by the end. Except the adoring little boys who play sandlot ball when they are not actually cheering on the professionals. A few lives were ruined, the gamblers got less than they planned, but the game went on. That year’s team became known as the Black Sox, but the socks were bleached again by 1920.
Commentary by Cicely d’Autremont
Quotes
Cincinnati Reds player: "These guys don’t look so tough."
2nd Cincinnati Reds player: "Yeah, that’s what Custer said when the Indians took the field."
Chick Gandil: "You go back to Boston and turn seventy grand at the drop of a hat? I find that hard to believe."
Sport Sullivan: You say you can find seven men on the best club that ever took the field willin’ to throw the World Series? I find that hard to believe."
Chick Gandil: "You never played for Charlie Comiskey."
Hap Felsch: "I may be dumb fellas, but I ain’t stupid."
Eddie Cicotte: "I always figured it was talent made a man big, you know. If I was the best at something. I mean, we’re the guys they come to see. Without us, there ain’t a ballgame. Yeah, but look at who’s holding the money and look at who’s facing a jail cell. Talent don’t mean nothing. And where’s Comiskey and Sullivan, Atell, Rothstein? Out in the back room cutting up profits, that’s where. That’s the damn conspiracy."
Atell and Rothstein are discussing the plan to fix the Series.
Abe Atell: "They say that six or seven guys. I find that hard to believe. Arnold Rothstein: "Doesn’t surprise me. Abe Atell: "Yeah, but they’re the champs. Arnold Rothstein: "You were the champ, Abe, you went down for the bucks. Abe Atell: "This is different. Arnold Rothstein: "Look, champ. I know guys like that. I grew up with them. I was the fat kid they wouldn’t let play. “Sit down, fat boy.” That’s what they’d say. “Sit down, maybe you’ll learn something.” Well, I learned something alright. Pretty soon, I owned the game, and those guys I grew up with come to me with their hats in their hands. Tell me, champ, all those years of puggin’, how much money did you make?"
Abe Atell: "The honest fights or the ones I tanked?"
Arnold Rothstein: "Altogether. "I must’ve made ten times that amount betting on you and I never took a punch."
Abe Atell: "Yeah, but I was the champ. Featherweight champeen of the world!"
Arnold Rothstein: "Yesterday. That was yesterday."
Abe Atell: "No A.R. You’re wrong. I was champ, and can’t nothin’ take that away."
Trivia
Because John Sayles was bound by contract to produce a film under two hours long he showed the cast “City of Conquest” (1940) to encourage them to talk faster. “Eight Men Out” timed out at 1:59:48.
John Sayles looked so much like Ring Lardner that he played him in this film.
Apparently John Sayles cast John Cusak and Charlie Sheen less because of their acting ability and more because of their skill playing baseball.
A petition to reinstate Buck Weaver was denied by Judge Kenesaw Landis in 1922 despite having been signed by 22,000 White Sox fans.
Sources
IMDbTrivia
Rotten Tomatoes
Review in the Chicago Sun Times by Roger Ebert, September 8, 1988