Cru Jones Society

 

Every Wednesday between now and the end of baseball season the Cru Jones Society brings you a new baseball movie examined for both overall entertainment value and treatment of our favorite game. To suggest a film, email us at staff [at] crujonessociety.com. Otherwise, pour yourself an $8 beer, crack some shells, and let’s play ball.

Date Released: September 2, 1988
Box Office Total: $5,680,515
Team Featured: 1919 Chicago Black Sox 

“You get out there, and the stands are full and everybody’s cheerin’. It’s like everybody in the world come to see you. And inside of that there’s the players, they’re yakkin’ it up. The pitcher throws and you look for that pill… suddenly there’s nothing else in the ballpark but you and it. Sometimes, when you feel right, there’s a groove there, and the bat just eases into it and meets that ball. When the bat meets that ball and you feel that ball just give, you know it’s going to go a long way. Damn, if you don’t feel like you’re going to live forever.” – Buck Weaver

To most of us baseball is a game that we use to fill several hours on a warm summer afternoon. To Buck Weaver it was more than a game, it was his whole world. To seven of Weaver’s teammates, baseball was a paycheck, a paycheck they felt needed to and could be increased. This is the story of those eight men.

Plot Synopsis

The Chicago White Sox finished the regular season in first place. Looking like they should easily win the World Series, the team decides to go out and celebrate. The team discusses their pending series, the fantastic season, and how much of a bastard their owner, Charles Comiskey, is (after all their pennant bonus was bottles of flat champagne).First baseman, Arnold Gandil, talks with his old friend about how he would throw a boxing match, which leads to the idea of throwing the World Series. Arnold tells his friend he can get 6 or 7 of the players on board for 10 grand a piece, approximately 127 thousand by today’s standards. Arnold’s friend says he can get that kind of scratch together.

Arnold then goes off to get Charles Risberg on board. While they’re discussing the possibility of throwing the World Series they are approached by to low rate thugs who coincidently also want the Sox to throw the game in order to make themselves some easy money. Arnold and Charles decide to not let either of the payers know about each other in order to make more money.

Arnold and Charles are able to get five more players on board, two starting pitchers and three fielders. They approach Buck Weaver, but Buck doesn’t want to, he would rather win the World Series. Despite this, he still keeps his mouth shut.

Rumors abuzz about a fix being on. Two reporters think it may actually be true and keep a closer eye on the game, circling plays on their scorecard that seem a bit fishy.

Game one starts and at true to his word, starting pitcher Eddie Cicotte starts the fix with a bean ball on the first batter. There’s disappointment in Weaver’s face. The game continues with blatant bad playing by the Sox. Weaver is yelling at his own team. And the catcher, who is not in on the fix is growing more and more frustrated.

Game two looks just as bad as game one. The catcher continues to call for the curve ball, but receives a ball straight and right down the middle, that is if he receives the ball at all. The catcher becomes more verbal about not getting the pitch he’s calling for. After the game he attacks the pitcher in the locker room.

Game three is salvaged by some incredible pitching from a guy not on the take. Weaver, the pitcher and the catcher are thrilled. Everyone acts as though they are thrilled, but the crap has just hit the fan as the mobsters wanted the Sox to lose the first three games.

The Sox win the next couple of games and Charles is approached by a thug who tells him the Series still needs to be lost or his wife would be killed. The seven guys go back to it and lose the World Series. We are then treated to a montage of one of the reporters doing detective work and finding out the series was fixed. He publishes his findings and the Sox fans become enraged with him.

Comiskey, assuming his boys are clean, offers a reward for any proof of the Sox throwing games. The catcher then steps forward and tells Comiskey the Sox were not on the level. He has no actual proof, but the pitcher not throwing what the catcher was calling for was pretty compelling. Comiskey realizes the ramifications involved here and keeps his new info on the DL. Advised by his lawyer he then spearheads the task force to find the truth. This involves appointing a new commissioner of baseball, and he chooses a former Commie smasher and all around hard ass.

The eight Sox players all go to trial. Weaver maintains that even though he knew of the fix, he never participated and played ball on the up and up. After signed confessions go missing, a jury made up of the Sox peers (read: fans) find the Sox innocent. New hard ass commissioner doesn’t like this and declares any player who throws a game, promises to throw a game, or any player who knows for certain his teammates are throwing a game and doesn’t tell anyone will be banned from the game forever. And with that eight World Series caliber players never played in the majors again.

Treatment of Baseball/ Quality of Baseball Scenes

The baseball in this movie was fun to watch because they had to not only look like old time ball players, that is to say the movements are not as fluid as modern players, but they also had to look like good players playing poorly. To this end I think the treatment of the game was done fairly well.

Not having actually seen how these games went down I question if some of the botched plays were as obvious as the movie shows them to be. Arnold slows his run from second to third on a slow roller in the infield and he looks like he’s a runner deciding if he’s going steal a base. Or every time the pitcher gets a ball in play and he doesn’t decide where to throw it. All fundamentals tell us to almost always throw out the lead runner, but he gets the ball and there is hesitation and looking around like he has never played a game, let alone won 29 games and was the starter in the World Series.  If you’re going to throw a game, try not to look like you’re throwing a game.

The rest of the actual playing looked on par with any other movie we have discussed in this series. One other thing I really enjoyed was watching the pitchers pitch. They had what seemed like goofy wind up and delivery but if you look at footage from the time period it doesn’t seem out of place at all.

Annoying Romantic B-Story/Stifling Spouse

Two weeks in a row and we get a movie without a romantic b-story. One more and that’s called a winning streak. The only love story to really mention was Buck Weaver’s and Shoeless Joe Jackson’s love for the game.

Final Thoughts

The 1919 Black Sox Scandal has been something that has fascinated me since I first heard about it. I could never really understand how anyone would purposefully lose the World Series. This movie showed me how easily people can be corrupted by money and how being a jerk-off of an owner can come back to bite you in the ass. At the same time it showed me that there are a few people who hold certain things sacred and nothing can dissuade them from their love.

This is the kind of story where there is no clear way to get an accurate account. It becomes hard to decide who to believe and how to tell what actually happened. This movie wants us to see the Sox players as victims of an evil millionaire owner. It wants us to empathize with players who would rather get paid than win an honest game. I don’t do that with real athletes and I’m not about to do it with actors playing a group of guys who threw the World Series.

The only two characters I could empathize with were Weaver and Shoeless Joe. I felt as though the guys took advantage of Joe who appeared to not be the brightest of guys and Weaver went out there and did everything right. Despite knowing that he wouldn’t be, I was still hoping Weaver would be cleared.

I did think the actors did a good job, and it is a good story and one that should be told. Everything I’ve written in this part sounds like I hated this, but it is just the opposite. The movie is good and regardless of how I feel about what happened, the movie covered it and made it compelling. I enjoyed this movie.

The one thing that has always bothered me about the whole scandal and something I wish a movie like Eight Men Out would address is the how the Reds felt about winning the World Series this way. Here’s a group of guys who are playing good ball and playing it the right way, but have gone down in the history books as a team who won a World Series because their opponents threw games. There isn’t much worse than knowing you won because some one let you win rather than on your own merits.

Ruling from the Scorer: A stand up triple, played clean.

lee.s.hart@crujonessociety.com