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Unlike
other nostalgic baseball films (THE NATURAL, FIELD OF DREAMS), director John
Sayles's EIGHT MEN OUT explores one of the darkest moments in the history of
the sport--1919's infamous Black Sox scandal, when eight players on the
heavily favored Chicago White Sox agreed to throw the World Series. Based on
Eliot Asinof's 1963 book of the same name, the film investigates why the
players--including the great Shoeless Joe Jackson, who many believe belongs
in the Hall of Fame--would purposely lose the most important game of their
lives. Set in the same time period as Sayles's MATEWAN, EIGHT MEN OUT shows
how money and exploitative labor conditions destroy the purity of the game.
Even though the film has no star parts and ends on a bleak note, EIGHT MEN
OUT was the second Sayles film to receive financing from a major studio.
Studs Terkel appears as the famous journalist Hugh Fullerton, who exposes the
scandal, while Asinof and Sayles also have small roles.
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