Movie Review: 8 Men Out

From 1988, this movie told the story of the Chicago White Sox and the rigged 1919 World Series, which saw them lose to heavy underdogs the Cincinnati Reds by having 8 players conspire to throw the series.

The movie plays like a bit of a period piece, dictating a time just after World War 1 and just before the roaring 20s. The Chicago White Sox at the time were considered to be one of the greatest baseball teams ever assembled. For the time though, the players were vastly underpaid, and the movie does bring this theme up quite a bit.

Clifton James plays their stingy team owner, Charles Comiskey, and in a scene with star pitcher Eddie Cicotte, played by David Strathairn, the owner is shown denying him a $10,000 bonus that he would have received for winning 30 games. The reasoning given is that the pitcher only won 29 games, yet despite his stellar record, he sat for 5 games, which the player believes that he would have won at least 2 of, while also suggesting the owner knew this and was conspiring to pay him less by making him miss the bonus.

A pair of gamblers, Sleepy Bill Burns, played by screen legend Christopher Lloyd, and Billy Maharg, played by Richard Edson, see an opportunity to rig the series by convincing a handful of the players to throw the games, which would also mean being paid more than they would for winning. Knuckleball All-Star pitcher Eddie Cicotte is finally convinced after being denied the bonus he thought he would have earned tells corrupted teammate Chick Gnadel, played by Michael Rooker in an early role he is in.

The stage is set as the team plays through the games, and the 8 men out who have decided to conspire quickly start to clash with their teammates, who are mostly unaware of the plot and committed to winning. Buck Weaver and Shoeless Joe Jackson are depicted as both being in the know, with Weaver wanting to win anyway and Jackson being depicted as not really sure as to what was going on.

The team loses the first pair of games but then wins a third when their rookie pitcher, Dickie Kerr, played by Jace Alexander, pitches them to victory. The tensions really begin to rise with the pair of aforementioned gamblers getting quite nervous, especially after gangster Arnold Rothstein has agreed to go along with the game fixing. You can feel the pull between the traditionalists who love the game and the people who just want to make a quick buck of it even if it means screwing the players who went along with the plot.

The tension plays out with mafia style threats made to the players, a plane flies over the stadium and drops a dummy with a White Sox uniform onto the field as an implied threat for the players to go along. The tension between teammates, manager, and owner picks up pace as the games progress, all culminating in an ending that people who followed the history of these events know well, but I will let those who want to watch this fantastic film see for themselves.