Eight Men Out (1988)

Eight Men Out (1988)

Directed by John Sayles

Screenplay by John Sayles, based on the book by Eliot Asinof

Runtime: 1 hr, 59 min

Baseball has had a long history of, shall we say, less than ethical behavior.  From Ty Cobb sharpening his spikes to take out fielders, to allegations that Gaylord Perry threw spitballs, all the way to the still-current steroid era, the national pastime has had scandal galore and then some.  But one incident in particular stands out, and that of course would be the Black Sox scandal, in which in several players on the Chicago White Sox threw the 1919 World Series as part of gambling scandal.  It is this dark episode of baseball lore which John Sayles chronicles in Eight Men Out.

The eight men in the title refer to the ballplayers who were implicated in the scandal.  The most famous is “Shoeless” Joe Jackson (D. B. Sweeney), but he’s largely in the background.  In terms of the players, Sayles chooses to focus on the lesser known figures: first baseman and ringleader Chick Gandil (Michael Rooker), conflicted ace pitcher Eddie Cicotte (David Strathairn), and, especially, third baseman Buck Weaver (John Cusack), whose involvement in the scandal has been, as with Jackson’s, hotly contested.

The strength of Sayles’ film partially lies in how he portrays the chemistry, or lack thereof, within the White Sox organization.  Forget feelings on throwing the series; the opening sequence, depicting the last game of the regular season, shows the players ragging and sniping at each other regarding place of birth and education level.  Perhaps more importantly, the scene highlights the players’ incentive to throw the series, when owner Charles Comiskey (Clifton James) gives his team flat champagne in lieu of an actual bonus for winning the pennant.

Had the film kept the action squarely on the players, the story told would be both crystal clear and compelling on the character level.  Unfortunately, too broad a net is cast; every angle of the Black Sox scandal is covered.  The gamblers who initiate the scandal; the circle of Arnold Rothstein (Michael Lerner), who provided the money; the journalists who suspect something is up; the families of the players—they all get screen time.  But there simply isn’t enough screen time to adequately cover everything involved in the conspiracy.

In fact, the movie juggles so many story elements that there is scant time to register who’s who in the scandal.  Few of the characters who are not on the White Sox are given substantive introductions, and unless one is intimately familiar with the history of the 1919 World Series, I can’t imagine how one could follow this story without significant mental effort.  One of my rules for filmmaking is that the audience should always be able to determine what is literally happening on screen, but Eight Men Out has too broad a scope to follow that rule.

The performances in the movie are significantly better than the structure, though the best turns tend to be in supporting roles.  Christopher Lloyd keeps a comic undertone as gambling man Bill Burns, and Charlie Sheen is perfectly cast as the not-entirely-there centerfielder Happy Felsch.  My personal favorites, however, are Strathairn, who appears the most torn up about the scandal, and Gordon Clapp as beleaguered catcher Ray Schalk, constantly fuming that his pitchers are crossing him up and not throwing breaking balls.

Besides the acting, what Eight Men Out does best is capture the game on the field and in the stands.  While the real story of the Black Sox scandal involves backrooms and disreputable gamblers, this ultimately is a baseball film.  From Cicotte hitting the first batter of the series to Jackson’s home run during garbage time in game eight, Sayles puts a gradually changing atmosphere into each at-bat.  The crowd in Cincinnati is on its feet from the get go, but by the time the last game is played in Chicago, both the suspected fix and the inevitability of defeat weigh heavily on the fans.

As a matter of fact, the film captures the emotions in the park so well that it may have been a more effective movie if the fix were gradually revealed through the actions of the players and the reactions of the fans and journalists.  It would have kept the character count down, added a sense of mystery and dread to the proceedings, and allowed for some more complex character developments.  Sure, anyone with a cursory knowledge of baseball history would know that the series was fixed, but the question of how it’s exposed would still remain.

Alas, that not the movie that John Sayles made.  I find it difficult to fault a director for ambition, and covering every aspect of a story certainly would qualify as an ambitious endeavor.  But to accomplish such a feat, one must lay the foundations properly, and that’s ultimately what sinks the film.  Not enough background and too little individual character development prevent Eight Men Out from being a home run.  Maybe it’s a single that just gets past the shortstop.  In other words, it’s just a routine, unspectacular baseball flick.