From the Bookshelf of Retro Chapter Chicks …

Eight Men Out: The Black Sox and the 1919 World Series

Eliot Asinof,

Stephen Jay Gould (Introduction)

Find A Copy At

Libraries

Group Discussions About This Book

No group discussions for this book yet.

What Members Thought

Apr 07, 2019 Brina rated it really liked it · review of another edition

Shelves: baseball, history, chicago-setting

One of my favorite movie and book combinations is Shoeless Joe, which became the basis for the classic baseball film Field of Dreams. When Ray Kinsella hears a voice telling him, “if you build it, he will come,” he is convinced that if he constructs a baseball diamond on his farm, that Shoeless Joe Jackson and the other members of the 1919 White Sox will be able to play organized ball again. I have watched the film countless times but had never read Eight Men Out, Eliot Asinof’s book that detail One of my favorite movie and book combinations is Shoeless Joe, which became the basis for the classic baseball film Field of Dreams. When Ray Kinsella hears a voice telling him, “if you build it, he will come,” he is convinced that if he constructs a baseball diamond on his farm, that Shoeless Joe Jackson and the other members of the 1919 White Sox will be able to play organized ball again. I have watched the film countless times but had never read Eight Men Out, Eliot Asinof’s book that details the actual events in 1919 that lead to Jackson and his teammates’ banishment from Major League Baseball. As we have reached the hundredth anniversary of this event that shaped modern baseball, I felt that this was as good a time as any to read Asinof’s now classic story of baseball history.

In 1919, Major League Baseball was only forty three years old. The National League organized in 1876, followed by the American League in 1901. No city had enjoyed a successful run as Chicago which saw both the National League Cubs and American League White Sox at or near the top of league standings on an almost annual basis. With pride in the national game swelling following the defeat of axis powers in World War I the previous year, Americans’ love for baseball was at an all time high in 1919. White Sox owner Charles Comiskey boasted the best team in the American League and was poised to win another pennant. He ruled with an iron fist, keeping player salaries lower than that of any other team in baseball, leading him to earn large annual profits while outfitting a team of disgruntled stars. With the White Sox primed to win another pennant in 1919 and gate receipts at Comiskey Park at an all time high, Charles Comiskey felt that he held the hand that controlled most of the major leagues. Only one man challenged Comiskey, known as the Old Roman, for power: American League president Ban Johnson. The two men, while united in their love of baseball, had not been on speaking terms for years as each of them desired the upper hand for control. This feud, more than any events that would occur on the field, would shape how the 1919 World Series would be played out on the field.

By keeping player salaries below the league average, Charles Comiskey’s pennant winning team was not a unified group. There were two key cliques, one a group of educated players lead by second baseman Eddie Collins and the other a group of disgruntled, largely uneducated players lead by shortstop Arthur “Chick” Gandil. The double play combination was notorious for barely speaking to each other off of the field while also making stellar plays on it. Gandil and veteran pitcher Eddie Cicotte lead a faction who most believed that Comiskey had underpaid them for years. During a series in New York ten days prior to the close of the season, Gandil was approached by gamblers with a preposition: throw the World Series for $100,000. Even though he knew it was illegal to gamble on organized baseball, Gandil also saw that notorious baseball players on the take lead by Hal Chase of the New York Giants still had jobs in the big leagues even if they bet on a nearly daily basis. For Gandil and Cicotte it was a no brainer. They had families to support, mortgages to pay. As soon as they could find other teammates willing to go along with the fix, Gandil and Cicotte were on board with throwing the 1919 World Series.

Asinof details the World Series and its aftermath in a story that reads like a legal thriller. During the series itself, sportswriters and the White Sox manager and other players could tell that something was off. The White Sox boasted a superior team to their National League Cincinnati Reds opponents, yet the Reds won the first two games of the best of nine series effortlessly. The Sox manager took his concerns to owner Comiskey who was just as alarmed at gamblers taking control of baseball; yet, due to his ongoing feud with Ban Johnson, the league president did nothing to stop the fix. Perhaps had Johnson done what was right for baseball rather than his own ego, the scandal would have ended after the first two games, reinstating order to the game. Yet, Johnson saw the fix as an impetus to remove his rival from baseball once and for all. After eight games, the Reds came out on top, and the double crossed players had to settle for only $20,000 of the promised $100,000. Crooked gamblers had won the day, leaving baseball reeling. League owners desired that the game was cleansed of all gamblers, leading to the appointment of Judge Kennesaw Mountain Landis as its first full time commissioner. It was Landis rather than Johnson who banned the eight Black Sox for life, leading children to ask the great Joe Jackson, “say it ain’t so, Joe.”

Readers are introduced to notorious gamblers as Arnold Rothstein and leading sportswriters of the day including Hugh Fullerton of Chicago and Ring Lardner of New York. While players got paid paltry salaries and fell into a league with gamblers, sportswriters were in the pockets of the league owners. With newspapers being the lead source of media for the entire country, it was up to the writers to maintain baseball’s clean image for the fans. As the Black Sox trial played out, writers spoke of the players’ guilt while writing of gamblers double crossing and owners having zero knowledge of the fix. Shaky alliances formed out of gamblers with deep pockets and baseball owners with large egos. All wanted to be exonerated, especially Comiskey who stood to have eight players on his ball club banned for life. As the courtroom drama unfolded, the White Sox fell to the second division, and the New York Yankees, lead by Babe Ruth ascended to become baseball’s dominant team of the 1920s, cleaning up the game’s image and preserving it for generations to come. It would be until 2005 that the White Sox would win another World Series.

Shoeless Joe Jackson and the other Black Sox lived out the rest of their days as business owners and making attempts to play in semi organized ball. Over the years some asked to be reinstated only to have each successive commissioner deny their request. Jackson lived out the rest of his days in his hometown of Greenville, South Carolina and did not “play” in another major league game until the release of Field of Dreams in 1988, thirty seven years after his death. The Black Sox scandal removed gambling from organized baseball and lead to the coming of Babe Ruth as an American hero. In his 1963 baseball courtroom drama, Eliot Asinof has preserved this story of personal greed and ego rivalries for generations of baseball fans. Reading this in 2019, my only hope is that America’s game will last for at least another hundred years.

4 stars ...more

55 likes · Like · see review

Dec 06, 2016 Ƹ̴Ӂ̴Ʒ Jenn Ƹ̴Ӂ̴Ʒ Schu marked it as to-read

Shelves: non-fiction

Group Home Bookshelf Discussions

Photos Videos

Send invite Members Polls