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Eight Men Out: The Black Sox and the 1919 World Series | 
 enlarge | Author: Eliot Asinof
Creator: Stephen Jay Gould
Publisher: Holt Paperbacks
Category: Book
List Price: $15.00
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Avg. Customer Rating:  35 reviews
Sales Rank: 44361
Media: Paperback
Edition: 1st
Number Of Items: 1
Pages: 328
Shipping Weight (lbs): 0.7
Dimensions (in): 8.2 x 5.5 x 0.9
ISBN: 0805065377
Dewey Decimal Number: 364.168
EAN: 9780805065374
ASIN: 0805065377
Publication Date: May 1, 2000
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Product Description
The headlines proclaimed the 1919 fix of the World Series and attempted cover-up as "the most gigantic sporting swindle in the history of America!" First published in 1963, Eight Men Out has become a timeless classic. Eliot Asinof has reconstructed the entire scene-by-scene story of the fantastic scandal in which eight Chicago White Sox players arranged with the nation's leading gamblers to throw the Series in Cincinnati. Mr. Asinof vividly describes the tense meetings, the hitches in the conniving, the actual plays in which the Series was thrown, the Grand Jury indictment, and the famous 1921 trial. Moving behind the scenes, he perceptively examines the motives and backgrounds of the players and the conditions that made the improbable fix all too possible. Here, too, is a graphic picture of the American underworld that managed the fix, the deeply shocked newspapermen who uncovered the story, and the war-exhausted nation that turned with relief and pride to the Series, only to be rocked by the scandal. Far more than a superbly told baseball story, this is a compelling slice of American history in the aftermath of World War I and at the cusp of the Roaring Twenties.
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| Customer Reviews: Read 30 more reviews...
 "Say It Ain't So, Joe. . ." July 17, 2008
Eliot Asinof played minor league baseball briefly, but his claim to fame is this riveting account of the 1919 World Series. The heavily favored Chicago White Sox lost the best of nine series to the Cincinnati Reds in eight games. In the following season, the White Sox were engaged in another pennant race when a newspaper expose revealed that several key players had conspired with professional gamblers to throw the World Series (less well known is the fact that a few of the same Chicago players were also implicated in throwing regular season games during the 1920 American League title race).
Asinof did not have the benefit of computerized statistical data bases that are an aid to contemporary baseball historians and researchers, so there are a few mistakes and omissions in the book, but it is nonetheless an important book that remains relevant to this very day.
Film director John Sayles adapted Asinof's book and made the story into a engrossing motion picture that took great care to get the historical details correct, but the screenplay had to compress the material to accommodate the requirements of a conventional movie running time. I suggest you read the book before seeing the movie.
 Nice knitting, but no yarn May 9, 2008
That eight members of the heavily-favored Chicago White Sox baseball team conspired with gamblers to throw the World Series in 1919 to the underdog Cincinnati Reds was somewhat in dispute -- until about 1920. After a sensational trial that year and several other investigations the general outline of "the fix" became well known, though Mr. Asinof apparently wasn't satisfied. This baseball-loving author was himself born in 1919 and obsessed enough to gather every detail -- and there's *lots* of detail here -- one would ever want to know about the scandal culled from sources still around in the early 1960s. `Eight Men Out' is the noble 1963 result, which addresses every possible *how* one could ever want about this fascinating bit of history. Too bad it suffers badly when it comes to *why*.
Simply put, Asinof doesn't tell much of a *story* -- at least in the sense of identifying the various character's motives, the fundamental conflicts, and of course how these are finally resolved. We get a smattering of the main character's backgrounds (including a great nugget of the famous gambler Arnold Rothstein pulling a knife on his adorable brother when they were children because the latter got more attention) and are informed, of course, of Sox owner Charles Comiskey's famous stinginess with player salaries but teasing out the motivation for and ultimate consequences of the fix is left largely in the reader's hands. While I can't find much fault with readers drawing their own conclusions -- and especially from a journalistic account this detailed -- `Eight Men Out' unfortunately doesn't quite stay "objective." Perhaps aware that a dry retelling of facts (many of them legal and arcane) makes for a stiff tale, Asinof drops several *hints* to keep his plot moving (e.g., sports gambling was fairly prevalent at the time, many players openly cavorted with gamblers, baseball itself had little to no policing of its players actions) and even makes a few clumsy attempts to recreate obviously apocryphal conversations. (One between Sox manager Kid Gleason and gambling shill Abe Atell is especially painful.)
This compendium of detail punctuated with a little narrative color gets the job done: I now know the undiluted who, what, where, when and how of this famous account. But given its renown and continuing resonance through the sports world I was frankly expecting much more. What were the *real* reasons the players got involved -- especially since at least one of them (third baseman Buck Weaver) clearly didn't "play soft" during the Series and several received no money at all? Was the baseball establishment justified in appointing a take-no-prisoners commissioner (ex-Federal judge Kennesaw Mountain Landis) who subsequently banned -- for life -- all the involved players from the major leagues? Did baseball itself -- with its cheapskate owners, publicity-seeking officials, and infamous "reserve clause" that created near-servitude conditions -- contribute to conditions that tempted the players?
Clearly interesting questions to ponder but Asinof doesn't even frame them terribly well, much less ask or answer them directly. As he admits in his introduction, the author had a difficult time getting the involved parties to talk about the scandal -- even several decades later. Strangely, even after a mountain of fact-gathering, he seems equally reticent to directly question this most damaging episode in American professional sports. I finished his book informed of everything and persuaded of nothing. No terrible thing, really -- but to fill out the story I'd strongly recommend John Sayles' excellent 1988 film of the same name.
Black-Sox classic May 3, 2008
Originally published in 1963, rereleased in 1987 to coincide with the "Major Motion Picture" trumpeted on the cover.
The story of the 1919 "Black Sox" scandal, when eight members of the Chicago Sox team of another stripe conspired to throw the World Series to the Cincinnati Reds, a heavy on-paper underdog. The eight Sox were charged, tried, and acquitted, but immediately banned from organized baseball for life by new baseball commissioner Judge Kennesaw Mountain Landis, hired specifically for this purpose.
This story is an American tragedy; the reader is drawn to the likable yet gullible baseball players being played for fools by the gambling interests and baseball owners, both with the wherewithal and organization to act to protect their interests and sacrifice the baseball players in a sordid morality tale.
The movie is a faithful recreation of the book, taking very few liberties with the historical account.
"Gentlemen, they went to see a ballgame. But all they saw was a con game."---States Attorney Gorman to the jury February 18, 2008
"Eight Men Out" was first published in 1963 but may still be considered the definitive account of the 1919 Black Sox scandal which is often brought up in today's media as a reference to the current black spot on baseball ("steroids is the biggest scandal since 1919..."). The Chicago White Sox's loss in the 1919 World Series caused by eight (well, one of the 8--Buck Weaver--actually played to win) players who agreed to throw the series as part of a gambling conspiracy was very complex with many names involved. The strongest part about Asinof's book is how clearly he explains the workings of the series fix. The official trial documents were lost and most of the survivors of that time who were in anyway close to the fix refused to cooperate with the author.
Asinof had to rely in large part on newspaper articles either contemporary or later accounts that revealed hitherto unknown facts about the case. Despite such limitations, Asinof clearly reveals the workings of the gambling world, the motivations of the players involved in the conspiracy, the suspicions of the newspapermen who covered the series, and the response of the higher ups like Charles Comiskey and AL President Byron Johnson in dealing with the scandal. Conjectures were made in the process, but Asinof includes relevant background information on the characters involved to give validity to his interpretations.
The planning of the conspiracy (probably the most difficult part of the story to tell) and the games themselves are the most comprehensive and intriguing parts of the book. The trial and the aftermath were also well-written and thorough covering the fates of almost every character involved. I saw a sports memorabilia catalogue that offered a letter signed by Commissioner Landis to Joe Jackson dated April 6, 1922 which stated "In view of the crime in connection with the World's Series of 1919, of course the money about which you inquire cannot be paid to you" (the minimum bid was $5,000--half of what Cicotte received for his part in the conspiracy). This book definitely gave me a better understanding of what that 1919 scandal that ruined the careers of Jackson and seven of his teammates was about. If one is really interested in this subject, I would recommend also looking at other more recently published books to see if there has been more information unearthed since "Eight Men Out."
The little guys took the fall. May 24, 2007
0 out of 1 found this review helpful
I saw the movie, but the book explains in more detail the tragedy of the 1919 World Series White Sox (or Black Sox). This book details that the gamblers such as the Little Champ were the real villians in this fiasco. Commisky was also a cheap skate who payed his talented players peanuts and then expected them to win pennants. The victims were the ball players who all expected were rich (they were not) and got duped by a bunch of fast talking gamblers. Shoeless Joe Jackson comes across as a decent man trying to make a go of it in life. These talented people were out matched by more brilliant eastern money men.
This is a great read about the All American pastime. I came away with true respect for the ball players, although not the baseball clubs. This is a tragic story of eight talented players being out hustled by gamblers.
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