Rating: 
Summary: read it and weep
Review: Eight Men Out
In the book eight men out, Eliot Asinof puts you right into the 1919 Chicago White Sox season. He goes through everything in and out, leaving out no details. The introduction gives a great feel on how the book will role. Asinof starts by giving a preview, like I said, and then goes on to explain the fix, series, exposure, trial, impact, and the aftermath.
The Chicago White Sox were a pennant winning team owed by Charles Comiskey, a penny pincher, hands on manger who always undercuts his players. The fixes started when the team won the pennant. Comiskey promised his team and players rewards of raises and big parties if they victorious. When the team followed there job and did not receive anything they became angry.
A few gamblers found out that Comiskey's boys were looking to make a money making scheme. The gamblers presented an offer to eight players to throw the 1919 World Series. Those eight players agreed and did what they were told, the Sox's loss the first game. But, when Cincinnati Reds won the first game the smell of a fix was in the air. The commissioner of baseball ended up performing a complete investigation. The players that were involved in the sandaled ended up getting got but avoided jail through the help of others. The only punishment that they received was that they could never play professional baseball ever again.
Rating: 
Summary: A Baseball Player who can Relate
Review: Eight Men Out
In the book eight men out, Eliot Asinof puts you right into the 1919 Chicago White Sox season. He goes through everything in and out, leaving out no details. The introduction gives a great feel on how the book will role. Asinof starts by giving a preview, like I said, and then goes on to explain the fix, series, exposure, trial, impact, and the aftermath.
The Chicago White Sox were a pennant winning team owed by Charles Comiskey, a penny pincher, hands on manger who always undercuts his players. The fixes started when the team won the pennant. Comiskey promised his team and players rewards of raises and big parties if they victorious. When the team followed there job and did not receive anything they became angry.
A few gamblers found out that Comiskey's boys were looking to make a money making scheme. The gamblers presented an offer to eight players to throw the 1919 World Series. Those eight players agreed and did what they were told, the Sox's loss the first game. But, when Cincinnati Reds won the first game the smell of a fix was in the air. The commissioner of baseball ended up performing a complete investigation. The players that were involved in the sandaled ended up getting got but avoided jail through the help of others. The only punishment that they received was that they could never play professional baseball ever again.
Rating:
Summary: THE BLACKSOX SCANDAL!!!!!
Review: Eliot Asinof's Eight Men Out gave an excellent depiction of the first World Series played after WWI. This series had everything, one of the greatest baseball teams of all time (Blacksox) playing a Reds team that was supposed to get swept. It also had the most famous scandal in baseball history, along with millions of baseball fans, after a devastating war, trying to watch a good wholesome series and forget what happened in WWI. Unfortunately they got a fixed series. It was a very unfortunate ending to the likely Hall of Fame careers of Buck Weaver and "Shoeless" Joe Jackson, but that's the price one must pay for gambling. The only reason why this book didn't get five stars was the lack of post trial coverage and careers after their early exit from baseball. Other than that I recommend this book to baseball fans of all ages and guarantee that no matter how much of a history buff you are you can learn something from this book.
Rating:
Summary: National Pastime as Greek Tragedy
Review: From the first paragraph to the last sentence of this gripping book, Asinof grabs your interest and doesn't let go. The story he is telling is fascinating - a tale of talented but clueless ballplayers, manipulating gamblers, money-hungry owners, and corrupt politicians, all coming together to create the greatest scandal the world of baseball has known. He tells it with clear, clean prose that keeps the story moving through every detail to its tragic conclusion.
The eight disgraced ballplayers who threw the 1919 World Series have been dubbed the Black Sox for posterity, yet with two exceptions, they are the most sympathetic characters in the whole sordid story. Chick Gandil, the tough first baseman who hatched the scheme, and his friend Swede Risberg, nasty tempered shortstop, who needed no prodding to join in, don't come off well. The rest of the crew, however, seem to have joined in a half-hearted, hapless manner. Particularly tragic are Shoeless Joe Jackson, one of baseball's greatest all-time hitters, whose talent was only exceeded by his naivete, and Buck Weaver, the outstanding thirdbaseman whose only real fault was his loyalty to his friends in not reporting the scheme, as he took no part in throwing the games, and accepted no money. These clueless, grossly underpaid ballplayers, most of who profited little or nothing from the fix, were the only ones punished for the scandal that rocked the nation.
The tale of the gamblers involved is as fascinating as it is telling. Three distinct levels of gamblers were present in the fix. Sleepy Bill Burns was an ex-ballplayer and small time gambler who did the legwork, consulting with the players. He went bust and was double-crossed by both the gamblers above him and Chick Gandil. Abe Attell and Sport Sullivan were a level up on the gambler's food chain - they had some access to the big time boys, but were not part of that exclusive club. Through constant maneuvering and double-dealing, and calculated risk taking, they were able to walk away from the scheme with a tidy profit. Arnold Rothstein was the big time. His money backed the fix, yet he took almost no personal risk, and emerged completely unscathed from the whole nasty affair while turning a huge profit. Big fish eat little fish, no matter what the ocean.
Finally, the least likeable characters of this tragic, real life morality play were Charles Comiskey, owner of the White Sox, and the rest of the baseball owners. For years they had turned a blind eye to the corruption of gambling in the game rather than expose it and risk the popularity of their sport and the profits in their ticket sales. When the fix of the World Series exploded across newspaper headlines, and they could no longer hide their dirty secrets, they used all their wealth and connections, buying off elected officials, and even colluding with the gamblers behind the fix, to protect their reputations and profits. It was their power, their lawyers, their money, that presented eight ballplayers as the scapegoats for national outrage, while willingly sacrificing true justice and exposure of their own hypocrisy. After reading this book, you may be left shaking your head that Charles Comiskey is in the Hall of Fame, and Shoeless Joe Jackson is forever banned from that hallowed hall.
Eight Men Out is a story of baseball, crime, and legal maneuvering. It is a window into the workings of power, and a cautionary tale of the corruption of the American dream and the twisting of justice by powerful interest. Most of all, it is an American tragedy of lives and reputations ruined, dreams shattered, and potential unfulfilled, that is as fascinating as it is sad.
If you are interested in baseball, American history, or the sociology of American society, you should read this book. You will not be disappointed.
Rating:
Summary: Eight Men Out - A Must Read
Review: I have owned this book for several years and read it a while back. I started reading it again, intent on just browsing through some of the highlights. Once I started, it was like reading it for the first time. The writing is so vivid and the story so engrossing that I found myself hoping that the players would not throw the games and later that they would all, especially Buck Weaver (I loved John Cusack in that role) get reinstated back in the game, even though I knew this could not happen.It seems that if Judge Kenesaw Mountain Landis had the information that Eliot Asinof had, he would have let all the players back in the game. This is a book I will no doubt read again.
Rating:
Summary: This is the best baseball history book ever!
Review: I loved this book. It explained the scandal so well that I became an expert in one day.
Rating:
Summary: Excellent Recap of Baseballs Darkest Days
Review: I thoroughly enjoyed reading this book. I only knew of the Black Sox Scandal of 1919 on a superficial level. This book gives you the details of all the conversations, meetings, and actions that took place between the players, gamblers, and management which led to 8 players of the Chicago White Sox baseball susposedly throwing the 1919 World Series. Asinof has surprising detail of conversations that took place and talks about each person involved as if he knew them personally. You wonder how he received all this info in the age before tape recorders and microphones were prevalent. He certainly did impressive research and the book should be commended for that. What he doesn't do is take sides and seems to write the book as a distant observer. But at the end you seem to feel somewhat sorry for some of the players involved, especially the ones among the eight (Buck Weaver, Joe Jackson) who didn't necessarily throw their games but were banned for life anyway because of their knowledge of the conspiracy. What would you have done in their position? Overall, it's most likely the best summary of one of the most incredible and darkest events in sports history. It's must read for all sports fans.
Rating:
Summary: Excellent Baseball History. Great Writing.
Review: I thought this was an excellent read that I found hard to put down. It is rightly ranked by Roger Kahn ("The Boys of Summer") as one of the best 10 baseball books of all time. No matter how much you know about baseball, this book gives a great background on what being a ball player was like during the first two decades of the century. While it is true it is hard to sympathize with today's athletes who seem to be loyal to the highest salary, this book makes it hard not to sympathize with players who were subject to the salaries imposed upon them and whose only recourse was to sit out. There was no free agency in those days and under the reserve clause a player was at the whim of the team's owner. If he didn't like his pay he could choose not to play for that team, but the owner would also make sure he couln't play for any team. While not condoning gambling by players or throwing games (especially in the World Series), it is hard not to understand the temptations faced by many players who were underpaid, near the end of their careers and with no other skills other than baseball. In those days before social security and major league pensions, a bribe of more than your annual salary and the chance to get even at the owner who, in your eyes, was exploiting you, must have been very tempting indeed. The book certainly makes you feel sympathetic toward "Shoeless" Joe Jackson and Buck Weaver. Like Pete Rose, these two players probably deserve some of the forgiveness that we're so proud of. Jackson should be in the Hall of Fame and Weaver's name should be cleared. The writing is superb. It gives us a good feel for the intensity surrounding a World Series, the world of gamblers and the world of sportswriters. It also shows that all the good things about baseball and its traditions are the same today as they were then and serve as a connecting thread through generations. See the movie again afterwards. It is very faithful to the book.
Rating:
Summary: Excellent Baseball History. Great Writing.
Review: I thought this was an excellent read that I found hard to put down. It is rightly ranked by Roger Kahn ("The Boys of Summer") as one of the best 10 baseball books of all time. No matter how much you know about baseball, this book gives a great background on what being a ball player was like during the first two decades of the century. While it is true it is hard to sympathize with today's athletes who seem to be loyal to the highest salary, this book makes it hard not to sympathize with players who were subject to the salaries imposed upon them and whose only recourse was to sit out. There was no free agency in those days and under the reserve clause a player was at the whim of the team's owner. If he didn't like his pay he could choose not to play for that team, but the owner would also make sure he couln't play for any team. While not condoning gambling by players or throwing games (especially in the World Series), it is hard not to understand the temptations faced by many players who were underpaid, near the end of their careers and with no other skills other than baseball. In those days before social security and major league pensions, a bribe of more than your annual salary and the chance to get even at the owner who, in your eyes, was exploiting you, must have been very tempting indeed. The book certainly makes you feel sympathetic toward "Shoeless" Joe Jackson and Buck Weaver. Like Pete Rose, these two players probably deserve some of the forgiveness that we're so proud of. Jackson should be in the Hall of Fame and Weaver's name should be cleared. The writing is superb. It gives us a good feel for the intensity surrounding a World Series, the world of gamblers and the world of sportswriters. It also shows that all the good things about baseball and its traditions are the same today as they were then and serve as a connecting thread through generations. See the movie again afterwards. It is very faithful to the book.
Rating:
Summary: Everything about the Black Sox and Then Some
Review: I vaguely knew about just what happened during the 1919 World Series, but after reading this I found that there was more to what happened than just eight players throwing the Series for money. Eliot Asinof does a marvelous job of gathering information on the events leading up to and following the 1919 World Series. He recounts how the scandal came about, through the five of seven games the White Sox lost, through the investigation and court proceedings, up to the lives of the eight banished players after baseball. Throughout the book I tried to figure out just who in fact was/were the scapegoat(s) -- Comiskey, the players, or the gamblers -- yet after finishing the book I realize that all are to blame. Though one could argue that Joe Jackson and Buck Weaver should have been reinstated, the fact is that both, even though they may not have participated, allowed the conspiracy to take place by not telling their manager "Kid" Gleason or Comiskey. Overall this was a great book and I highly recommend it to anyone who wishes to find out about the Black Sox. *There is a scene in the movie "Eight Men Out" where Eddie Cicotte is shown a baseball that would be used the next season. After watching the movie, I had a thought: during the late 1910s the book explains how baseball attendance was notably declining. To bring back the crowds, a different type of baseball was used beginning in the early 1920s--a ball woven tighter for the purposes of traveling farther when hit. (Cicotte noticed this when holding the ball.) This coincided with the launching of Babe Ruth as a baseball icon due to his home-run hitting abilities. As a result, he may have been single-handedly responsible for restoring interest in baseball. Baseball experienced another lull in attendance in late 1994 as the strike approached, and also early in 1995. What did baseball do to bring back the fans? Well, though some speculate that baseballs were juiced in the late 1990s, I can say this: Brady Anderson hit 50 home runs in 1996; he never had another season in his career where he hit more than 25.
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