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Classic Movie Review: 'Eight Men Out' is the Most Underappreciated Baseball Movie of All Time

The Black Sox Scandal inspired one of the great underappreciated Sports movies in history in Eight Men Out.

By Sean PatrickPublished 2 years ago 5 min read
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With Baseball out of its 2022 Lock Out and getting ready to return for a full 162 game season in April of 2022, I'm looking at some of the greatest Baseball movies ever made. Recently, I made my declaration that Bull Durham is the Greatest Baseball Movie of All Time, check out that review, linked here. Now, I want to talk about a baseball movie that is deeply underappreciated. 1988's Eight Men Out is one of the best sports movies of all time and, in terms of baseball movies, easily the most underappreciated in the sub-genre.

John Sayles among the most underrated directors in history. Perhaps it is the subtlety of his work, the lack of flash, the professionalism that some mistake as mundane. Sayles’ films have personality to spare and yet, his sparse production style and deep focus on the inner lives of his characters are often the qualities that make his work appear less accessible than most mainstream fare. Eight Men Out is, perhaps, the best known work of Sayles’ lengthy career because it is the most accessible.

The story of the 1919 Black Sox scandal was destined to be made into a motion picture. The only question was when? When would Hollywood recognize just how brilliantly cinematic this story was. One of the greatest baseball teams in history, by the numbers, decided to throw the World Series as a way of sticking it to their skinflint owner, Charles Comiskey (Clifton James), the jerk for whom the stadium was named for several decades.

History can lay what the players did in 1919 squarely on the doorstep of Comiskey. Sayles perfectly illustrates the motivations of the White Sox players in a scene in Eight Men Out that demonstrates that Comiskey had the means of preventing the Black Sox scandal from happening but his greed was far too great along with his ego. When pitcher Eddie Ciccotte, played here by David Straithairn, requests a well-earned $10,000 bonus for having won 29 games in 1919, a bonus he was contractually supposed to get for his performance, Comiskey used a technicality to deny it to him.

This incident drove Ciccotte into the arms of gamblers who’d already recruited several of Eddie’s teammates to throw a few games and let the Cincinnati Reds win a significant upset victory in the World Series. Sox First Baseman Buck Weaver (John Cusack) was among the few players that were approached by gamblers and refused the money but did not stop his fellow players from doing what they did. Cusack’s Weaver is the heart and aching soul of Eight Men Out and it is Cusack's career best performance.

A scene late in Eight Men Out is a standout for Cusack as Buck rails in court about not being allowed his own trial. The Sox players faced criminal conspiracy charges, in case the seriousness of this scandal hadn’t set in for you, and Buck Weaver wasn’t allowed to testify on his own behalf so he could state his innocence. In the end, the players were acquitted of wrongdoing but were still banned from baseball for life. Buck Weaver would spend the rest of his life begging to be allowed back into baseball and would be denied every single time for his alleged role in the scandal.

The most well known part of the Black Sox story is the involvement of the great ‘Shoeless’ Joe Jackson, here portrayed by D.B Sweeney. Joe is shown in the movie as taking money from the gangsters but his play in the World Series in 1919 tells a different story. Jackson set a World Series record with 12 hits and a 373 batting average. A legendary quote from a Jackson supporter states ‘If Joe was throwing the series, he did a damn poor job of it.” Jackson committed no errors in the field either.

Joe’s biggest issue was his inability to read. Sayles smartly lays in several scenes of Jackson’s wife, Kate (Wendy Makkena), reading to him. Unfortunately, she wasn’t present when a White Sox lawyer lied Joe into signing a confession. He was told that the confession would only say that he had accepted the money, not that he had willfully acted to throw games, something he demonstrably did not do. Nevertheless, Joe Jackson remains banned from baseball to this day. D.B Sweeney's performance is dignified and sad, he captures the physical grace and tenacity of Joe Jackson wonderfully.

There are so many exceptional things about Eight Men Out but my favorite are the performances of Sayles himself, as reporter Ring Lardner, and legendary sports writer Studs Terkel as Hugh ‘Hughie’ Fullerton. Though historically inaccurate, Fullerton and Lardner wrote for different papers, the scenes between Sayles and Terkel are charged with personality as the cynical yet brilliant reporters capture the Black Sox scandal as it happened with the kind of wit and style that took him beyond the sports world and into the admiration of legends such as F. Scott Fitzgerald and Virginia Woolf. A standout scene in Eight Men Out has Sayles as Lardner serenading the cheating Sox players. Out of context it sounds strange but it is electrifying in the movie, perhaps the best scene in a movie filled with great moments.

Eight Men Out is one of the greatest baseball movies ever made. A smart, cynical, highly polished yet gritty retelling of one of the most important moments in sports history. John Sayles was the perfect director for this movie. His films are well-known for charismatic cynicism. This isn’t angry or polemical work, it’s even handed and filled with real history shaped with cinematic finesse that makes a complex story mainstream and accurate while remaining highly entertaining.

I absolutely adore John Sayles. Sayles is a masterful director whose smaller films such as Lonestar, Silver City and Sunshine State, are under-recognized masterworks. Eight Men Out was the announcement of his remarkable talent to mainstream audiences and while they may not have taken note, that announcement became a clarion call for film lovers who’ve been loving his work for more than 30 years.

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About the Creator

Sean Patrick

Hello, my name is Sean Patrick He/Him, and I am a film critic and podcast host for the I Hate Critics Movie Review Podcast I am a voting member of the Critics Choice Association, the group behind the annual Critics Choice Awards.

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