TwinkieTown Movie Night: Eight Men Out

Here’s your link for the movie. It’s from a Strange Site, but most internet security experts consider it pretty safe (when it comes to collecting your data, IMDb is worse). It has good image quality and no commercials, so no sync issues! Sync issues are a pain on Movie Nights! Start the show at 7:30!

So, hypothetical question. If there’s something going on in baseball which really threatens the integrity of the sport, and you absolutely know it, what do you do about it?

Specifically, what do you do if it’s driving up fan interest? Making a lot more money for team owners? And some of that money is trickling down to players?

Well, in the 80s/90s/00s, that something was “roiding,” and everybody knew it. The players all knew it, the owners all knew it. Some of the players participated, some didn’t. Eventually, all the owners (and the commissioner) claimed they had no idea what was going on. And some of the players claimed that too, although nobody believes them.

In 1919, that something was “gambling.” Everybody knew it was driving up fan interest, and it had a huge risk of threatening the integrity of the sport. The players all knew it, the owners all knew it. Eventually, all the owners (and the first baseball commissioner) claimed they had no idea what was going on. And some of the players claimed that too, although nobody believes them.

Hmm, what do you think is happening today?

Writer/director John Sayles wrote this script in the 1970s, before he’d ever made a movie, and used the script as kind of a showcase for his talents, to help raise funding for his first independent films. He based the script largely on the 1963 book Eight Men Out by Eliot Asinof, and the book (I haven’t read it) is considered a little below modern standards of baseball history research. For 1963, though, it was considered pretty good. (Asinof — who was born in 1919 — revisited the subject in a 1990 book, which I’d guess has some of the more updated research available by that point.)

There’s a lot that’s unknowable about the 1919 World Series gambling fix. The best article about it (that I’ve found) is this one by law professor Douglas Linder. It’s quite possible that some of the players who took bribes from gamblers intended to double-cross the gamblers; take their money, then play the best they could. (Particularly Buck Weaver and Joe Jackson, both of whom hit very well in the Series.) It’s possible some of the players had planned to do this, but were scared into cooperating by threats of violence from the gamblers.

And while White Sox owner Charles Comiskey was a skinflint (like every owner before or since), the 1919 Sox had a very high payroll compared to almost every other team in the league. But what’s certainly complete bulls**t is Comiskey and the other owners claiming, later, that they had no idea there was so much gambling going on! Like Claude Rains in Casablanca…

“Your winnings, sir.” “Thank you very much.” (Even when Claude Rains is playing corrupt, he’s certifiably cool.)

Ted Williams once said, about Joe Jackson: “Joe shouldn’t have accepted the money… and he realized his error. He tried to give the money back. He tried to tell Comiskey… about the fix. But they wouldn’t listen. Comiskey covered it up as much as Jackson did — maybe more. And there’s Charles Albert Comiskey down the aisle from me at Cooperstown — and Shoeless Joe still waits outside.”

What a cast, here! John Cusack, Clifton James, Christopher Lloyd, John Mahoney, David Strathairn… many others. John Sayles himself appears as writer Ring Lardner.

(Fun Movie Trivia Fact: Lardner, Jr., Ring’s son, wrote the screenplay to M*A*S*H*, the 1970 film. But director Robert Altman and the cast used so much improvisation that Lardner was furious, and half-demanded his name be taken off the credits. Then he won an Oscar for Best Screenplay and stopped complaining.)

Here’s tonight’s link again! Fire it up at 7:30!

And here’s the upcoming schedule:

January 9: Benched (2018)

Boy, do I know NOTHING about these next two films. But they were requested by Movie Night commenters, so if you want to suggest a movie, join in the comments! John C. McGinley and Garret Dillahunt star as two youth baseball coaches with very different approaches to coaching. Free on a Strange Site.

January 16: Alibi Ike (1935)

Starring the great Joe E. Brown (Some Like it Hot) as a baseball player who concocts a harebrained excuse for every mistake, hence his nickname. Free on a Strange Site.

January 23: Major League (1989)

I wanted to do this right after A League of Their Own (two titles with the word “league”) but then it disappeared from the mainstream streamers. Well, it is also on the Strange Site.

I’ve got some ideas for future ones if we do this more, and all movie suggestions are absolutely welcome & wanted!

But, until then, pop your popcorn, and let’s start the show at 7:30!