{"id":9508,"date":"2010-11-17T07:00:02","date_gmt":"2010-11-17T06:00:02","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/baseballgb.co.uk\/?p=9508"},"modified":"2010-11-23T21:42:23","modified_gmt":"2010-11-23T21:42:23","slug":"eight-men-out-by-eliot-asinof","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/baseballgb.co.uk\/?p=9508","title":{"rendered":"Eight Men Out by Eliot Asinof"},"content":{"rendered":"

Eight Men Out by Eliot Asinof (Holt Paperbacks, 1987), 302 pages<\/strong><\/p>\n

\"Emo\"The 1919 Black Sox scandal, in which eight Chicago White Sox players accepted money to \u00e2\u20ac\u02dcthrow\u00e2\u20ac\u2122 the World Series, is one of the most infamous sporting events of the\u00c2\u00a020th century.\u00c2\u00a0 Eliot Asinof\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s book about the episode is acknowledged as the definitive account of all that transpired, both during the event and in the aftermath.<\/p>\n

Eight Men Out\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s credentials as an essential book for any baseball fan therefore are well established and recent events have only made it seem all the more powerful.<\/p>\n

The basic story of the Black Sox scandal, including the mournful \u00e2\u20ac\u02dcSay it ain\u00e2\u20ac\u2122t so, Joe\u00e2\u20ac\u2122 refrain, are well known.\u00c2\u00a0 Indeed, plenty of people at the time were aware, or strongly suspected, that the Series wasn\u00e2\u20ac\u2122t being played on the level.\u00c2\u00a0 Hugh Fullerton sat in the press box circling plays on his scorecard that didn\u00e2\u20ac\u2122t look quite right, catcher Ray Schalk visibly raged at his pitchers failing to perform to their usual standards.\u00c2\u00a0 It was the worst-kept secret in town, pushed to one side only due to many deciding not to believe what they heard or saw.<\/p>\n

What really happened was less well-known.\u00c2\u00a0 Even the players involved didn\u00e2\u20ac\u2122t know all the details, not even half of them, of how the fix was put in place and actually carried out.\u00c2\u00a0 Our current familiarity with the tale is largely due to Asinof\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s feat of tireless research and detective work that culminated in the release of this book in 1963.\u00c2\u00a0 Even with court transcripts and mountains of contemporary newspaper coverage, his work in sifting through the rumours and dead-ends to tell a tale that those involved never wanted to be known was a monumental achievement.<\/p>\n

Asinof covers the whole affair: how the fix was organized, how the series actually played out, the occasionally farcical court trial that followed and the longer-term impact it had on baseball and those involved.\u00c2\u00a0 This edition also includes an introduction from the late Stephen Jay Gould that helps to place both the scandal and this book into context, although any reader will become aware of the wider themes addressed.<\/p>\n

There have been several recent high-profile scandals involving allegations of match-fixing and the modern practice of \u00e2\u20ac\u02dcspot fixing\u00e2\u20ac\u2122, often leading sports writers to make reference to the Black Sox of baseball\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s past.\u00c2\u00a0\u00c2\u00a0 The English cricket summer was played out under a dark shadow due to allegations against members of the Pakistan cricket team, for instance.\u00c2\u00a0 The situation raised the same questions that baseball fans struggled with in 1920 as the sorry saga was revealed: how could it happen and why would players (allegedly) get involved in such things?\u00c2\u00a0 The focus rested squarely on the players, who may have been culpable but were mere pawns in a larger game in which the real levers of power always remained out of sight and out of reach.<\/p>\n

Eight Men Out isn\u00e2\u20ac\u2122t just a textbook study of how the fixing of sporting contests can come about.\u00c2\u00a0 It also provides an object lesson in what can happen when a sport is faced with a potentially devastating scandal.\u00c2\u00a0 Reading Eight Men Out today, it\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s hard not to draw clear parallels with baseball\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s recent crisis: the so-called steroid era.<\/p>\n

In both cases, plenty of people knew what was happening, but it was easier not to rock the boat and draw negative publicity onto the sport.\u00c2\u00a0<\/p>\n

The home-run hitting feats of Mark McGwire, Sammy Sosa, Barry Bonds et al<\/em> were the perfect way for baseball to recapture the hearts of a nation that had questioned its love of the sport due to the 1994\/95 labour disputes and subsequent strike.\u00c2\u00a0 Fans piled into ballparks once again, just as they had in 1920 when the season was building to an exciting finish.\u00c2\u00a0 As Asinof memorable states: \u00e2\u20ac\u0153the dirty rumours of last fall had been buried in the excitement of the pennant race.\u00c2\u00a0 [White Sox owner Charles] Comiskey counted his money and let them lie\u00e2\u20ac\u009d<\/p>\n

However, such events refuse to stay secret forever and it\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s important to make sure that when the worst does happen, it happens on the sport\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s own terms.\u00c2\u00a0 That\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s ultimately how the \u00e2\u20ac\u02dcBlack Sox Scandal\u00e2\u20ac\u2122 ended up, with the eight players being acquitted in court but still all banned for life from baseball, leading Asinof to surmise:<\/p>\n

\u00e2\u20ac\u0153So, in the end, baseball won its battle.\u00c2\u00a0 They had rescued the ballplayers from the clutches of the law, only to make victims of them on their own terms.\u00c2\u00a0 Baseball, the club owners could boast, had cleaned its own house\u00e2\u20ac\u009d.\u00c2\u00a0<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

The very same thing could be said about MLB\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s Mitchell Report into the steroid era: a self-imposed process designed to make scapegoats of a few players and to head-off the potential of someone else doing a thorough investigation instead.\u00c2\u00a0<\/p>\n

And there is a final clear link between the Black Sox and the steroid era.\u00c2\u00a0 As ballplayers were put in front of Congress while many other tainted sportsmen were left alone, it was claimed that baseball still held a special place in America\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s heart and that the players were therefore held to a higher standard than their sporting contemporaries.\u00c2\u00a0 So it was back in 1919\/1920: \u00e2\u20ac\u0153America expected higher morals from ballplayers than they expect from businessmen \u00e2\u20ac\u201c or anyone else, for that matter\u00e2\u20ac\u009d.<\/p>\n

Eight Men Out really is essential reading, not just for baseball fans but for fans of all sports.\u00c2\u00a0 It\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s a fascinating story, brilliantly researched and written, that still packs a powerful punch because the central themes it explores are as relevant, and as important, today as they were all those years ago.<\/p>\n

Have you read \u00e2\u20ac\u0153Eight Men Out\u00e2\u20ac\u009d? Feel free to share your thoughts in the comments section below. Can you recommend any other similar books? If so, let us know.<\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Our 2010\/11 offseason book review series begins with a baseball classic: Eliot Asinof’s seminal book about the Black Sox Scandal<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[17],"tags":[76,112,553],"class_list":["post-9508","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-baseball-books","tag-book-reviews","tag-chicago-white-sox","tag-mlb-2"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/baseballgb.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9508","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/baseballgb.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/baseballgb.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/baseballgb.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/baseballgb.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=9508"}],"version-history":[{"count":9,"href":"https:\/\/baseballgb.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9508\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":9715,"href":"https:\/\/baseballgb.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9508\/revisions\/9715"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/baseballgb.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=9508"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/baseballgb.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=9508"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/baseballgb.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=9508"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}