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misshgtraveling's review
5.0
You can't begin to make this stuff up. Great, sad story that today's players must really appreciate.
jakewritesbooks's review
4.0
Bill James is a legend among baseball fans. His greatest rep is as the Analytics Guy but my first taste of his work was his text on the Hall of Fame, in which he critiques the process by which people enter. James devoted a chapter to baseball’s most famous banned people: Pete Rose and Shoeless Joe Jackson. I was excited for this. Jackson was a main character in the beautiful film Field of Dreams, where the moviemakers centered the story around his supposed innocence.
James devoted about six or seven pages to Rose’s hall of fame case. I skimmed over them because I never cared for Pete Rose and I was excited to see what he was going to say about Joe Jackson. Finally, at the very end, he had one sentence and I still remember it: My feeling on people who Jackson’s hall of fame campaign is that they’re similar to people who show up to trials wanting to marry the cute murderer.
The air was let out of my balloon and it took me years to understand why Jackson was so scandalized. Yeah, there were people more complicit in the White Sox throwing the 1919 World Series, particularly Chick Gandil, Eddie Cicotte and Lefty Williams. But Jackson didn’t seem so bad. Was he?
Jackson’s case is less at the center of Asinof’s seminal work than the story writ large: how did this happen and why? To that end, Asinof tries as hard as possible to hew closely to the facts. He doesn’t have a narrative of who is good and bad here. However, that doesn’t prevent him from editorializing from the narrative.
What took me years to appreciate about this “scandal” was that the center of it is not gambling or sports but labor. What we do with our labor, how we are compensated for it, and how we are treated as employees. To that end, there is some sympathy to be had for the players. Charles Commiskey was a penurious owner. He could–and did–cut players with no financial recourse to them. He skimped on things they desperately needed as athletes to compete. These players needed the money. The temptation is understandable.
The scandal itself was also complex. There’s no easy narrative about how these guys threw games or when. Some straight up said no (Buck Weaver), others waffled to the point where it was impossible to tell (Jackson, Felsch), others were all in.
I don’t know what the easy answer is except that the game should’ve been reformed to give players more control. The reserve clause which bound players to their teams wouldn’t be eliminated for almost sixty years after the World Series. It’s tough to look at these players as heroes; after all, they got in bed with gangsters to the detriment of their personhood and under threat to their families. But it’s important to see them as more than what Bill James would dismiss as “cute murderers.” It’s a complex story, a sad story and Asinof should be credited for playing it straight.
James devoted about six or seven pages to Rose’s hall of fame case. I skimmed over them because I never cared for Pete Rose and I was excited to see what he was going to say about Joe Jackson. Finally, at the very end, he had one sentence and I still remember it: My feeling on people who Jackson’s hall of fame campaign is that they’re similar to people who show up to trials wanting to marry the cute murderer.
The air was let out of my balloon and it took me years to understand why Jackson was so scandalized. Yeah, there were people more complicit in the White Sox throwing the 1919 World Series, particularly Chick Gandil, Eddie Cicotte and Lefty Williams. But Jackson didn’t seem so bad. Was he?
Jackson’s case is less at the center of Asinof’s seminal work than the story writ large: how did this happen and why? To that end, Asinof tries as hard as possible to hew closely to the facts. He doesn’t have a narrative of who is good and bad here. However, that doesn’t prevent him from editorializing from the narrative.
What took me years to appreciate about this “scandal” was that the center of it is not gambling or sports but labor. What we do with our labor, how we are compensated for it, and how we are treated as employees. To that end, there is some sympathy to be had for the players. Charles Commiskey was a penurious owner. He could–and did–cut players with no financial recourse to them. He skimped on things they desperately needed as athletes to compete. These players needed the money. The temptation is understandable.
The scandal itself was also complex. There’s no easy narrative about how these guys threw games or when. Some straight up said no (Buck Weaver), others waffled to the point where it was impossible to tell (Jackson, Felsch), others were all in.
I don’t know what the easy answer is except that the game should’ve been reformed to give players more control. The reserve clause which bound players to their teams wouldn’t be eliminated for almost sixty years after the World Series. It’s tough to look at these players as heroes; after all, they got in bed with gangsters to the detriment of their personhood and under threat to their families. But it’s important to see them as more than what Bill James would dismiss as “cute murderers.” It’s a complex story, a sad story and Asinof should be credited for playing it straight.
pickleballlibrarian's review
5.0
Great baseball history book that showed what really happened to the 1919 Black Sox. Shoeless Joe Jackson was innocent!
cdbaker's review against another edition
3.0
This was definitely more detail than I needed on this topic (book club pick), but also weirdly compelling? I did finish it thinking that everyone involved was either an ass or an idiot.
wwatts1734's review
3.0
I really wanted to love this book, since I am a White Sox fan and I have a fascination with the 1919 Black Sox scandal. Up until 2005, that 1919 team was the most recent team that the White Sox could really brag about. But I was mildly disappointed with "Eight Men Out". This book is a melding of Eliot Asinof's two favorite things - baseball and socialism. In the movie adaptation of the book, the socialism aspect of this story was smoothed out, but in the book it is pronounced.
Asinof's thesis is that Charlie Comiskey, the owner of the White Sox and greedy capitalist extraordinaire, oppressed and exploited his players to such a degree that they rebelled against him by joining organized crime figures in throwing the 1919 World Series. While this plotline is compelling, it is not really supported by the actual events. It is true that Charley Comiskey was a cheapskate. In fact, the moniker "Black Sox" that is applied to this team was first advanced in the press when the White Sox players, in protest of Comiskey's refusal to pay for the team's laundry expenses, started wearing stained hosiery. However, Comiskey's players did not live in poverty. Their salaries were pretty much in line with what other major league ballpayers made at the time. Some of the players were not paid much, more as a result of their own lack of education and negotiating skills and also due to the fact that ballplayers at the time were not represented by professional agents. Some players, like Ivy League educated 2nd baseman Eddie Collins, actually made much more than the league average. Comiskey paid the expected expenses of the team such as hotel and railroad expenses. No White Sox players at the time were starving.
However, Asinof's thesis that Comiskey's greed drove the players to desperate measures, in Asinof's eyes, is supported by two things. Asinof relates stories about players who were screwed over by Comiskey. One story is that Eddie Cicotte, the ace starting pitcher for the team, was benched for the last few games of the season so that he could not win 30 games, triggering a bonus from Comiskey. This in fact is not true; there is no evidence that Cicotte missed any starts because of management intervention. The other thing that Asinof uses to support his thesis is the fact that the players did, indeed, conspire to throw the series. However, there are other reasons for the conspiracy besides what Asinof proposes.
My reading suggests that the real reason behind the Black Sox scandal was not as sexy as Asinof thinks. The fact of the matter is that the conspiracy rests on the efforts of two players, Chick Gandil and Swede Risberg, who were shady characters who saw the 1919 Series as an opportunity to score a buck. The players who went along with it may have done so out of greed themselves, or, more likely, due to good old fashioned coersion and intimidation on the part of Gandil and Risberg. It is an indisputable fact that Gandil left baseball in 1920 and went on a spending spree that can't be explained by his salary. It is also probably true that none of the other players seemed to have received much money at all for their part in the conspiracy. What they did receive was a trial and a lifetime banishment from baseball by order of the first baseball commissioner, Kennesaw Mountain Landis, who was appointed to the new post as a result of the scandal.
Regardless of my disagreement with Asinof's analysis, this book is an interesting look at baseball at the end of the deadball era. He succeeded in resurrecting the memory of the Black Sox, which itself is a good thing. If you are interested in a good baseball story, I would recommend "Eight Men Out", although I would take its lessons with a grain of salt.
Asinof's thesis is that Charlie Comiskey, the owner of the White Sox and greedy capitalist extraordinaire, oppressed and exploited his players to such a degree that they rebelled against him by joining organized crime figures in throwing the 1919 World Series. While this plotline is compelling, it is not really supported by the actual events. It is true that Charley Comiskey was a cheapskate. In fact, the moniker "Black Sox" that is applied to this team was first advanced in the press when the White Sox players, in protest of Comiskey's refusal to pay for the team's laundry expenses, started wearing stained hosiery. However, Comiskey's players did not live in poverty. Their salaries were pretty much in line with what other major league ballpayers made at the time. Some of the players were not paid much, more as a result of their own lack of education and negotiating skills and also due to the fact that ballplayers at the time were not represented by professional agents. Some players, like Ivy League educated 2nd baseman Eddie Collins, actually made much more than the league average. Comiskey paid the expected expenses of the team such as hotel and railroad expenses. No White Sox players at the time were starving.
However, Asinof's thesis that Comiskey's greed drove the players to desperate measures, in Asinof's eyes, is supported by two things. Asinof relates stories about players who were screwed over by Comiskey. One story is that Eddie Cicotte, the ace starting pitcher for the team, was benched for the last few games of the season so that he could not win 30 games, triggering a bonus from Comiskey. This in fact is not true; there is no evidence that Cicotte missed any starts because of management intervention. The other thing that Asinof uses to support his thesis is the fact that the players did, indeed, conspire to throw the series. However, there are other reasons for the conspiracy besides what Asinof proposes.
My reading suggests that the real reason behind the Black Sox scandal was not as sexy as Asinof thinks. The fact of the matter is that the conspiracy rests on the efforts of two players, Chick Gandil and Swede Risberg, who were shady characters who saw the 1919 Series as an opportunity to score a buck. The players who went along with it may have done so out of greed themselves, or, more likely, due to good old fashioned coersion and intimidation on the part of Gandil and Risberg. It is an indisputable fact that Gandil left baseball in 1920 and went on a spending spree that can't be explained by his salary. It is also probably true that none of the other players seemed to have received much money at all for their part in the conspiracy. What they did receive was a trial and a lifetime banishment from baseball by order of the first baseball commissioner, Kennesaw Mountain Landis, who was appointed to the new post as a result of the scandal.
Regardless of my disagreement with Asinof's analysis, this book is an interesting look at baseball at the end of the deadball era. He succeeded in resurrecting the memory of the Black Sox, which itself is a good thing. If you are interested in a good baseball story, I would recommend "Eight Men Out", although I would take its lessons with a grain of salt.
pharmdad2007's review
4.0
This book took me a while to read, but it was not because of lack of interest. The history of baseball is fascinating to me, and I never before realized just how much that history was shaped by the monumental scandal of the 1919 World Series. My only complaint about the book was the writing style, which left something to be desired occasionally, and the infrequent typos, which are just annoying to me. Overall, this is a must-read for any sports fan.
disasterchick's review
5.0
I enjoy baseball. This really a great history of baseball and the changes that have been made. Amazing to find out there were not much saved records and mainly newspaper accounts. We've all heard, "Say it ain't so, Joe." Learning about Shoeless Joe Jackson is heartbreaking. I knew the very basics of this incident. I have learned so much, but maybe after watching Ken Burns baseball and becoming acquainted with more figures this book will be reread for a deeper meaning.