Eight Men Out

Growing up a sports fan in Chicago, I learned to love the White Sox from an early age, going to countless games with my Dad over the years. The 2005 team that won the World Series is still one of the coolest moments of my life to this point and is something I'll never forget. But as much as I love the Sox, they will always be responsible for one of the darkest moments in baseball history, and bigger than that, professional sports. In 1919, eight players (allegedly) took money to fix the World Series, losing to Cincinnati. Their story was immortalized in 1988's Eight Men Out, one of the all-time underrated sports movies.

Tearing through the American League and winning the pennant, the Chicago White Sox, led by five-tool player Joe Jackson (D.B. Sweeney) and 29-game winner Eddie Cicotte (David Strathairn), head into the World Series against the Cincinnati Reds the heavy favorites. Gamblers from Chicago to New York City see a chance for a big payday, starting by approaching Sox first baseman Chick Gandil (Michael Rooker) to see if enough players would be interested in throwing the series for a payoff. The plan sounds awful. How could professional ballplayers on one of the best teams ever assembled throw the championship? Having been mistreated and poorly paid for years by owner Charles Comiskey (Clifton James) though, Gandil finds suitors, finally settling on eight players, some more committed than others. When the best-of-nine series starts though, will the players go through with it?

As a sports fan, there is something incredibly uncomfortable about watching this movie. As a Sox fan, there is something really unpleasant watching the story unfold. The details of the Black Sox scandal plagued the franchise for years, the 2005 World Series team finally wiping some of the embarrassment away. Just as a sports fan and a baseball fan, you feel wrong watching something like this. 'Eight' neither condemns nor makes the eight players into heroes. Some like Eddie Cicotte are looking for money as his career winds down, Gandil is looking for a quick payday, and others like Jackson and third baseman Buck Weaver (John Cusack) aren't even sure they should be involved. Director John Sayles simply tells his story, and lets the viewer come to his own conclusions.

Any fan of sports, history, or doesn't live under a rock is at least somewhat familiar with this incident. Eight players were kicked out of baseball two years later for throwing at least part of the 1919 World Series although it's a personal judgment call as to whether all eight were guilty. In other words, you know how the story will end before it starts. Sayles takes on that challenge, directing a story that never failed to keep me interested. He builds a sense of doom throughout as the series develops, the fix clearly in. Cicotte's signal that he's going along with the fix -- hitting Game 1's first batter -- is a simple but surprising and even shocking moment. It is very real from here on in, and with one pitch things changed forever for baseball. The series bounces back and forth, even the Sox questioning if they should go along when their promised pay isn't provided. Give Sayles credit. He made the known content of history interesting, keeping us guessing.

With at least 30 or 40 speaking roles, a handful of performances still manage to rise to the top. Cusack especially as 3B Buck Weaver is a scene-stealer, a hard-nosed baseball player who claimed to the day he died he had nothing to do with the fix. He sees what's going on around him but is basically helpless to do anything. Sweeney plays Jackson as the immensely talented but naive Shoeless Joe, a player caught up in something bigger than he is. He knows nothing else other than baseball, and to this day fans still say he played as hard as ever in the 1919 Series. The movie's final shot focuses on Jackson, an incredibly moving closing. Strathairn as Eddie Cicotte delivers an understated but very effective performance, a pitcher who sees the finish line in sight, a man who's been mistreated by his boss, the dirt-cheap Charles Comiskey. John Mahoney plays Kid Gleason, the Sox manager who sees what's going on but is helpless to stop it.

That's far from all though, just the best of the bunch. The other players include Rooker's Gandil, Charlie Sheen as Happy Felsch, Don Harvey as shortstop Swede Risberg, Gandil's conniving partner, James ReadPerry Lang as Lefty Williams, a southpaw and second pitcher in on the fix, and as Fred McMullin, a little-used benchwarmer. Gordon Clapp, Bill Irwin and Jace Alexander play members of the Sox playing it straight come game-time. Michael Lerner plays Arnold Rothstein, big-time gambler putting the money up for the fix, with Christopher Lloyd, Kevin Tighe and Michael Mantell as other gamblers involved. Sayles and Eight Men Out author Eliot Asinof are good playing off each other as two sports writers suspicious of what's going on with the White Sox on the field.   

Good or bad, shown in a positive or negative light, there is something to be said for a baseball movie (of which there are too few). The baseball action is handled in exciting fashion without getting bogged down. The actors look like baseball players, appearing very natural on the field. The late 1910/early 1920s look of the movie doesn't hurt either, fans coming out to the stadium wearing suits. Throw away just about anything else though, and baseball and its simple beauty make up the heart of the movie. Even in the sport's darkest days, it is great to watch. Why it isn't remembered more fondly I'll never know.

Eight Men Out <---trailer (1988): ****/****